Suzan-Lori Parks

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Suzan-Lori Parks

Born 1964
Fort Knox, Kentucky
Occupation Playwright
Nationality United States
Influences

Suzan-Lori Parks (b. 1964)[1] is an award-winning American playwright and screenwriter. She was a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002. She is married to blues musician Paul Oscher.[2]

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[edit] Background

Parks was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky into a military family. She spent part of her childhood in Germany and "attended German high school instead of the English speaking school for military children. The experience, in addition to teaching her the fundamentals of language, showed Parks what it feels like to be neither white nor black, but simply foreign." [3]

She eventually returned to the United States and graduated from The John Carroll School in 1981. [4] She later attended and graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1985 with a B.A. in English and German literature (cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa).[5]

Parks noted in an interview that her name is spelled with a "Z" as the result of a misprint early in her career:

When I was doing one of my first plays in the East Village, we had fliers printed up and they spelled my name wrong. I was devastated. But the director said, 'Just keep it, honey, and it will be fine.' And it was. [6]

[edit] Influences

Parks would credit the impact of Mount Holyoke on her career later in life. [7] While she was an undergraduate, her Mount Holyoke English professor Mary McHenry introduced Parks to Five Colleges faculty member James Baldwin. [8] Parks began to take classes with Baldwin and, at his behest, began to write plays.[8] Parks also noted that she was inspired by Wendy Wasserstein, a 1971 Mount Holyoke graduate who won the Pulitzer in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles. [7]. Finally, in addition to McHenry, Parks also credited another Mount Holyoke professor, Leah Blatt Glasser, with her success. [9]

[edit] Career

[edit] Screenwriter

As a screenwriter, Parks has worked with important figures in the American film industry. Her first screenplay was for Spike Lee's 1996 film, Girl 6. She later worked in conjunction with Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions on screenplays for Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005) and the 2007 film, The Great Debaters (with Robert Eisele). [10][11]

[edit] Playwright

Her plays include Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, The America Play (the opening scene of which inspired Topdog/Underdog), Venus (about Saartjie Baartman), In The Blood and Fucking A (which are both a retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter).

From November 2002 to November 2003, Parks wrote a short play each day for a year. The result of this process is the "365 Days/365 Plays" series (featuring premieres of various of the 365 plays around the United States in 2006 and 2007). According to an article in the New York Times,[12] "subject matter for the plays, most only a few pages long, ranges from deities to soldiers to what Ms. Parks saw out of her plane window."

[edit] Pulitzer Prize

Her 2001 play, Topdog/Underdog (a play about family identity, fraternal interdependence, and the struggles of everyday African American life), won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002.

[edit] Novelist

Parks is the author of the novel Getting Mother's Body.

[edit] Other

Suzan-Lori Parks appeared on the cover of LA STAGE in November 2006 (photograph by Eric Schwabel).

[edit] Works

[edit] Plays

[edit] Collections

[edit] Plays for radio

  • Locomotive (1991)
  • Third Kingdom (1990)
  • Pickling (1990)

[edit] Screenplays/teleplays

[edit] Books

  • Getting Mother's Body: A Novel (2003)

[edit] Essays and speeches

[edit] Awards

Winner:

Nominations:

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Norton Anthology of American Literature. Norton Books.
  2. ^ Suzan-Lori Parks and Paul Oscher
  3. ^ Suzan-Lori Parks
  4. ^ "Connections", John Carroll School, Spring 2007, pp. 4. (English) 
  5. ^ Suzan-Lori Parks '85 Took Her Cue from Five College Professor James Baldwin. Mount Holyoke College.
  6. ^ "A moment with Suzan-Lori Parks, playwright", The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 26, 2003.
  7. ^ a b Suzan-Lori Parks '85 Wins Pulitzer Prize for Drama. College Street Journal (April 12, 2002).
  8. ^ a b Suzan-Lori Parks Interview. Academy of Achievement (June 22, 2007).
  9. ^ In the News: Traditions and communications. College Street Journal (May 24, 1996).
  10. ^ 'Debaters' makes its case
  11. ^ Harris, Dana and Brodesser, Claude (2004). "Back-to-back helming: Washington to take 2 gigs," Variety Sep. 29, 2004. Retrieved December 16, 2007.
  12. ^ Robertson, Campbell. "What do you get if you write a play a day? A lot of premieres." New York Times, November 10, 2006.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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