BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Suzan-Lori Parks was born in Kentucky and lives in Manhattan. Raised as an army brat, she lived in six states before attending high school in Germany. Parks holds degrees from Mount Holyoke College and the Yale School of Drama.

She has been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She was also the recipient of a 1995 Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Award and received a CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts (Drama) for 1996. Currently, the author is an Associate Artist at the Yale School of Drama and a member of New Dramatists. Expanding outwards from playwriting, she wrote the screenplay for Spike Lee's Girl 6. Recently featured in the LA Times Faces to Watch 2000. In 1989, The New York Times named her "The year's most promising new playwright." A 2001 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Award, Parks received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play "Topdog/Underdog".

PLAYS

Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom - 1989

First performed at BACA Downtown in Brooklyn, New York on September 14, 1989 under the direction of Liz Diamond.

The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World - 1990.

First produced at BACA Downtown in Brooklyn in the fall of 1990; production directed by Beth A. Schachter.

Devotees in the Garden of Love - 1992

Premiered at Actors Theatre of Louisville's 1992 Humana Festival.

The America Play - 1993

Commissioned by Theatre for a New Audience and given workshop productions at Arena Stage and Dallas Theater Center in 1993. Premiered in New York City at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre as a co-production between the New York Shakespeare Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, and Theatre for a New Audience in February 1994.

Venus - 1996

Commissioned by the Women's Project; premiered in New York City at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre on April 16 under the direction of Richard Foreman.

Fucking A - 2000

Premiered at the DiverseWorks Artspace in Houston

"Fucking A is the story of the divisions of genders, classes, races, and generations, set in an indeterminate future, where the privileged and the poor have come to speak entirely different languages and where it is a crime to procreate out of wedlock."

In the Blood - 1999

Premiered at the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival under the direction of David Esbjornson in November 1999. The play will be produced at the Guthrie Theater April 20-May 13, 2001.

"Forget Nathaniel Hawthorne's New England, circa 1850. Forget the Puritans and Scarlet Letters. This Hester is the 1990s homeless mother of Jabber, Bully, Trouble, Beauty and Baby. She is street-wise and hip to the scene. Her home is the underside of a bridge in a New York ghetto. Her story is gritty and pitted with racial, gender and social injustice. Not to mention blatant double standards of morality. Lucky for Hester La Negrita, she has an over-sized, brazen sense of humor and an Obie-winning, African-American playwright, Suzan-Lori Parks, to bring her story to the Lab stage."

The text of the play can be found in American Theatre, March 2000 v17 i3 p31.

Topdog/Underdog - 2001

Premiered at the Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival during its 2000-2001 season.

"A darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity, "Topdog/Underdog" is Suzan-Lori Parks' latest riff on the way we are defined by history. "Topdog/Underdog" tells the story of Lincoln and Booth, two brothers whose names, given to them as a joke, foretell a lifetime of sibling rivalry and resentment. Haunted by their past, the brothers are forced to confront the shattering reality of their future. This piercing work is an extraordinary new departure for Suzan-Lori Parks, the author of "The America Play", "Venus", and last season's "In the Blood"."

AWARDS

Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom

1990 Obie for Best New American Play

Venus

1996 Obie for Best New American Play

Topdog/Underdog

2002 Pulitzer Prize