Susan-Lori Parks
Esther Freier Endowed Lecture Series in Literature
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 7:30 pm
Ted Mann Concert Hall
Parking: 19th Avenue and 21st Avenue Ramps. Map.
Admission: Free and open to the University of Minnesota community and the general public.
The reading will be followed by a reception and book signing.
To enhance our enjoyment of Parks' reading performance, the Departments of English and Theater, in partnership with Frank Theatre and the Playwrights' Center, present a month-long free Tuesday series dramatizing and deciphering Parks' provocative work. Framing Suzan-Lori Parks features performances, discussions, and readings. For details, see bottom of page.
Suzan-Lori Parks was born in 1964 in Fort Knox, Kentucky, the daughter of a Chicago-born Army lieutenant colonel and a West Texas native. Her father’s postings kept her family moving, and she spent a fair amount of her childhood in Germany. Parks attended Mount Holyoke College and studied with James Baldwin, who was the first to suggest she write plays. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa with majors in English and German literature, she studied acting at Drama Studio London.
Moving to New York in the late 1980s, she began writing plays and getting them produced, most notably: Betting on the Dust Commander (1987), Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (1989), which won an Obie Award, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1990), The America Play (1994), and Venus (1996), which won another Obie. Her 1999 re-visioning of The Scarlet Letter, In the Blood, was short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for drama. F**king A followed in 2000, then her debut Broadway production debut Topdog/Underdog, which won her the Pulitzer. Parks has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Foundation “genius” Grant.
In 2002-2003, Parks wrote the short plays that make up 365 Days/365 Plays, which has been staged across the country for the past year in an unprecedented effort involving nearly 700 theaters.
Parks has written one novel, Getting Mother’s Body (2003), and is working on another. In addition, she writes screenplays: her first feature film screenplay was Spike Lee’s Girl 6; Oprah Winfrey asked her to adapt Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God for the 2005 ABC production.
“One of my tasks as a playwright is to locate the ancestral burial ground—dig for bones, find bones, hear the bones sing, write it down.” — Suzan-Lori Parks
Framing Suzan-Lori Parks: A Series of Performances & Discussions
All events at 7:30 pm and free & open to the public. For information, contact Terri Sutton at 612-626-1528 or sutt0063@umn.edu.
February 26
Frank Theatre Presents Short Scenes
Rarig Proscenium Stage
Frank Theatre performs selected pieces from Suzan-Lori Parks' plays, directed by Wendy Knox, who helmed Frank's past productions of The America Play, Venus, and Fucking A. Featuring commentary by Liz Diamond, the first director of Parks' work, and a professor at the Yale School of Drama.
March 4
Directing Challenges & Discoveries
Rarig Proscenium Stage
A discussion panel enlivened by national and local directors and producers experienced with staging Parks' work. Featuring Oskar Eustis, formerly with the Guthrie Theater and now artistic director of New York's Joseph Papp Public Theater, which has presented four of Parks' plays; Wendy Knox, who has directed three of Parks' plays for Minneapolis' Frank Theatre; actor, director, and playwright Laurie Carlos; and University of Minnesota Theater professor Lisa Channer.
March 11
The Playwrights' Center Presents: Inspired By!
Playwrights' Center
A program of works taking off from Parks' writing penned by Twin Cities playwrights and poets. Curated by Christina Ham of the Playwrights' Center.
April 1
Suzan-Lori Parks in the History of African American Theater
Cowles Auditorium, Hubert H. Humphrey Center
Panel discussion led by Theater professor Dominic Taylor on Parks' place in the history of African American theater. Reference will be made to Black Arts poet and dramatist Amiri Baraka,
visiting the Twin Cities April 30 through the Givens Foundation and the University Libraries, and to August Wilson, whose plays receive two stagings by Penumbra Theatre February through May. This event will serve both as a coda to the Parks series and as a summit for meaningful discussion of the arc(s) of black American theater that these three writers' works represent. With English professor Josephine Lee, African American Studies professor Alexs Pate, visiting professor Pamela Fletcher, and poet e. g. bailey.
Thanks to the McKnight Special Events Fund for making this series possible.