Enjoy 'An Evening with Suzan-Lori Parks' at DePauw, April 19

April 13, 2006

Suzan-Lori Parks 2.jpg April 13, 2006, Greencastle, Ind. - Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks has "burst through every known convention to invent a new theatrical language, like a jive Samuel Beckett, while exploding American cultural myths and stereotypes along the way," opined Vogue. On Wednesday, April 19, you're invited to spend "An Evening with Suzan-Lori Parks," presented by DePauw University's Performing Arts Series. Her presentation, at 7 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center's Moore Theatre, is free and open to all.

After receiving a MacArthur "Genius Grant" award in 2001, Parks won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in drama for Topdog/Underdog, the story of two con men -- also brothers -- searching for ways to succeed. Her other plays include The Sinners Place, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (1990 Obie Suzan-Lori Parks Book.jpg Award for Best New American Play), 365 Plays/365 Days, and Venus, a 1996 Obie Award-winner which was staged February 2-5, 2006 at DePauw.

Of Parks' work, TIME magazine noted, "Her dislocating stage devices, stark but poetic language and fiercely idiosyncratic images transform her work into something haunting and marvelous."

"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," Parks has stated. Her writing raises historical questions about social and political issues. Suzan-Lori Parks’s works all involve a certain continuity of subject: marginalized men and women struggling with racial and class prejudice. In her talks, with her unique sense of humor, she discusses the process of becoming a writer, following one’s creative voice, and current politicsand the American theater, many times offering a performance with guitar and voice.

spectators Venus Play.jpg Parks has taught at several institutions including the Yale School of Drama, and the Dramatic Writing Program at CalArts. Her first novel, Getting Mother's Body, was released to critical acclaim. She is at work on screenplays for Denzel Washington and Brad Pitt.