Suzan-Lori Parks

Biography:

  • Suzan-Lori Parks grew up in a military family in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
  • Moved to West Germany because of her father's job in which she describes as the place that “did not make her feel white or black, only foreign”
  • She feels her consistent relocation to different places influenced her writing
  • In high school, one of her professors discouraged her from pursuing literacy in school because she could not spell but ended up studying writing anyways.
  • She went to Mount Holyoke College received a B.A. in English and German Literature. Here she met James Baldwin, a writer, playwright and novelist of color, who in every interview Suzan has credited her success to him and his ideals and teachings.
  • She continued her education at the Drama School London where she studied acting.
  • She was the first female African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize for Topdog/Underdog in 2002.
  • She uses historical events as a means of a focal point to express what students in school may not learn about people of color. Taking history and translating it to African American culture.

“A play is a blueprint of an event: a way of creating and rewriting history through the medium of literature. Since history is a recorded or remembered event, theatre, for me, is the perfect place to 'make' history--that is, because so much of African-American history has been unrecorded, dismembered, washed out, one of my tasks as a playwright is to--through literature and the special strange relationship between theatre and real-life--locate the ancestral burial ground, dig for bones, find bones, hear the bones sing, write it down.”

― Suzan-Lori Parks, The America Play and Other Works

Highlighted Play: Venus


Based on a true story about Saartjie Baartman, Venus Hottentot becomes her name as she is bought for a side show because of the shape of her body and her abnormally large bottom. After her popularity grows, a doctor buys her and takes her to Paris. Because of sexual assault by the doctor, she contracts an STD that leads to some unfortunate circumstances for "Venus" and in the end the audience finds out the doctors true intentions behind his interest in Venus: a dissection.

Educational Purposes: This play discusses a part of history that was completely lost among the young generation that was reintroduced with this play. It could connect with many young women across the world as well as be discussed in a history class as most of her plays can. It also uses many medical terms and phrases for the anatomy of the body. In performance studies, it can be used within the study of contemporary Brechtian style.

Activity: Ask students/audience to write a journal about a time that they felt a part of themselves was exploited, physically or emotionally. Teacher will hand out a few guiding questions for students to answer in the journal: How did it make you feel? What was the reaction afterwards? What were the after effects of the situation? Who benefited from this and what could you have done to stop it?

Discussion Questions to think about:

What is Suzan-Lori Parks trying to express with this play that is focused on this story and the way the characters treat the title character?

Why does she have the doctor speaking during the intermission?

Why does she bring in the chorus? Why is it important?

Does "Yes" always mean that a woman is giving consent? Are there situations that this would not be the case, why or why not?

Do you think Venus wanted to get out of this life she found herself in? Why? If yes, why do you think she felt like she couldn't? If no, Why not?

Why did Suzan-Lori Parks find a story that focused on a woman's body?

In the Blood

One of a two part play based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous novel The Scarlet Letter. Hester La Negrita is a mother of five children, all by five different fathers. Because the fathers are absent, her and her children are living under a bridge where she has to scrounge up everything she can to feed her children. In her search for the fathers of her children, she encounters people from her past and present that. They each have a monologue throughout the play followed by scenes with Hester that express their relationship to her. The monologues and scenes reveal their confessions about having an intention to help Hester and her family but then leads to taking advantage of Hester because, based on her history with men, they knew she was easy. They reveal the strength of human desires. The end reveals the ensemble/ chorus condemning her what she has done without knowing the true facts of her sexual assaults. Six actors play eleven different roles including children and adults. Hester is the only actor that stays the same throughout.

Educational Purpose: Creates an outlet for those who have been involved or are studying of sexual assault, that it can come from those who are close to you and who you may not expect. Just because they are trying to help, doesn’t mean that it isn’t assault. Also, a good means of comparison to Hawthorne’s original novel for older students to compare how the two cultures may be the same of different and if any of this would be applicable now based on race. Has anything changed?

Father Comes Home from the Wars Part 1, 2 and 3

A Three part play based on the Odyssey taking place in Texas during the Civil War. In Part 1, we are introduced to Hero, a slave, and he is told by his master that if he comes to fight in the war with the Confederates than he and his family will be freed. He is forced to chose between his family, beliefs and this potential life. Hero chooses to leave his family and fight. In part 2, Hero fights and has to makes decisions about saving himself or his fellow soldiers, that are fighting for things he does not believe in like slavery. In part 3, his family considers the advantages and disadvantages of escaping or waiting for him to return home and in the end decide to wait for him to return because of information given by their dog, Odyssey. Hero eventually realizes the costs of having freedom and that “the worth of a colored man that is freed is less of his worth when he’s a slave”

Educational Purpose: Teachers do not teach these scenarios in school when discussing the Civil War. People of color would fight for freedom and wouldn’t be as lucky as Hero and come home to their families or even come home at all. This could easily be read and studied in a social studies class discussing American History and instead of just discussing small facts about it, making sure students are aware of the impact it had on many families including families like this one discussed in this play.

Photo by American Repertory Theatre

Complete List of Works

Plays

  • The Sinner's Place (1984)
  • Betting on the Dust Commander (1987)
  • Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (1989)
  • The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1989–1992)
  • Pickling (1990) (radio play)
  • Third Kingdom (1990) (radio play)
  • Locomotive (1991) (radio play)
  • Devotees in the Garden of Love (1992)
  • The America Play (1994)
  • Venus (1996)
  • In The Blood (1999)
  • Fucking A (2000)
  • Topdog/Underdog (2001)
  • 365 Days/365 Plays (2006)
  • Ray Charles Live! (2007)
  • Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 8 & 9) (2009)
  • The Book of Grace (2010)
  • Porgy and Bess (2011) (adaptation with Diedre L. Murray)
  • Father Comes Home From The Wars (Parts 1,2&3) (2014)
  • Venus (2017), Off-Broadway

Screenplays

Books

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

Bibliography

Barre, N. (2015). If These Walls Could Talk: Performing Histories in the Works of Suzan-Lori Parks. In M. i. López-Rodríguez, I. i. Pineda-Hernández, A. Ceballos Muñoz (Eds.) , Old Stories, New Readings: The Transforming Power of American Drama (pp. 171-191). Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars


Brown-Gillory, Elizabeth. “Reconfiguring History: Migration, Memory, and (Re)Membering in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Plays.” Southern Women Playwrights: New Essays in Literary History and Criticism. Ed. Robert L. McDonald and Linda Rohrer Paige. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2002. Print.


Chun, Y. (2014). [Dramatic Transformation of Afro-American Music in Suzan-Lori Parks' Plays: The America Play, Venus and Topdog/Underdog]. Journal Of Modern English Drama, 27(3), 303-343.


Dean, M. (2007). Parks, Suzan-Lori (1964-). ABC-CLIO, LLC.


Fraden, R. (2010). Everything and Nothing: The Political and Religious Nature of Suzan-Lori Parks's 'Radical Inclusion'. In P. C. Kolin (Ed.) , Suzan-Lori Parks: Essays on the Plays and Other Works (pp. 20-33). Jefferson, NC: McFarland.


Frieze, James. “Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom: Suzan-Lori Parks and the Shared Struggle to Perceive.” Modern Drama 41.4 (1998): 523. Print.


Kornweibel, K. R. (2009). A Complex Resurrection: Race, Spectacle, and Complicity in Suzan-Lori Parks's "Venus.". South Atlantic Review, 74(3), 64-81.


Larson, Jennifer. Understanding Suzan-Lori Parks. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2012. Print.


LeMahieu, M. (2012). The Theater of Hustle and the Hustle of Theater: Play, Player, and Played in Suzan-Lori Parks's "Topdog/Underdog.". African American Review, 45(1/2), 33-47.


Letitia, G. (2011). Suzan-Lori Parks: Rearticulating the Laws of Race and Gender in African American History. South Atlantic Review, (2), 65.


Lloyd, S. (2013). Sara Baartman and the 'Inclusive Exclusions' of Neoliberalism. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 11(2), 212-237.


Mihaylova, S. (2015). The Radical Formalism of Suzan-Lori Parks and Sarah Kane. Theatre Survey, 56(2), 213-231.


O'Gorman, S. (2015). Reorienting Scarlet Letters: Suzan-Lori Parks' and Marina Carr's Hester Plays. Journal Of Adaptation In Film And Performance, 8(1), 39-60.


Park, Y. (2009). 'The Melting Pot Where Nothing Melted': The Politics of Subjectivity in the Plays of Suzan-Lori Parks, Wendy Wasserstein, and Tony Kushner. Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities And Social Sciences, 69(7), 2712-2713.


Sellar, T. (2014). Making History: Suzan-Lori Parks: The Shape of the Past. In P. i. Kolin, H. i. Young (Eds.) , Suzan-Lori Parks in Person: Interviews and Commentaries (pp. 49-54). New York, NY: Routledge.


Web page compiled by Jenna Dorece (2017)