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Parents
Parks mother is Francis McMillian Parks and her father is Donald Parks. Her father was a career officer in the United States Army, so the family moved frequently while Parks was growing up. Her father traveled throughout the U.S., Germany, Korea, and 2 tours of duty in Vietnam. He served for 25 years in the U.S. Army. Her mother, Francis McMillan Parks, was, according to the director Liz Diamond, “the kind of lady—a real Southern lady—who [wore] dotted swiss and gloves.” -
Suzan-Lori Parks
Suzan-Lori Parks was born on May 10, 1963, in Fort Knox, Kentucky. Parks has written nine full-length plays and hundreds of drafts. -
Siblings
Parks has a brother, Donald Parks, and a sister, Stephanie Parks. Her sister works at SU and her brother works with an organization to protect children from abuse. -
Places They've Lived
Parks grew up in Fort Knox, Kentucky. When her father served overseas in Vietnam, the rest of the family moved to Odessa, Texas, near Parks maternal grandmother. Then they moved to Germany because her father was posted there. Later on they returned to the U.S. Parks feels that her consistent relocation to different places influenced her writing. -
Education
She went to school in six states, rarely spending more than a year in the same school. In 1974, her father was posted to Germany and the whole family moved with him. In Germany Parks, her brother, and sister attended local schools, where they became fluent in German. In her high school, The John Carroll School in Bel-Air, Parks dreamed of becoming a writer but was discouraged by an English teacher because of her poor spelling. She graduated from high school in 1981. -
College
Temporarily abandoning her dream of becoming a writer, Parks entered Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts as a science student, but soon rediscovered her love for poetry and fiction, and decided to major in English and German literature. She graduated in 1985 with a B.A. in English and German literature. Parks then studied acting for a year at Drama Studio London. -
James Baldwin's Influence on Parks
Parks met James Baldwin in Mount Holyoke College. Baldwin is a writer, playwright, civil rights activist, and novelist. The highlight of Parks college career was a fiction workshop taught by James Baldwin. He encouraged Parks to find her own voice and to explore writing for the theater. Baldwin called Parks “an utterly astounding and beautiful creature.” Following Baldwin’s advice, Parks sought further theater education in order to improve as a playwright. -
Important Productions
- The Sinner's Place (1984)
- Betting on the Dust Commander (1987)
- Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (1989)
- Venus (1996)
- In The Blood (1999)
- Topdog/Underdog (1999)
- 365 Days/365 Plays (2002-2003)
- Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, and 3) (2014)
- White Noise (2019)
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Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom
The 1989 play explores African-American lives and the way their experiences during slavery echo and reverberate in the modern-day. Critics praised Parks uninhibited, imaginative language, and highly original stage imagery. The play won Off-Broadway’s Obie award for Best New Play. -
Venus
1996 play Venus is based on the true story of Sarah Baartman’s life. She was a slave of Dutch farmers. Her owner Mr.Cezar persuaded her to move to London with him to perform as a dancer and earn lots of money. He made her perform in freak shows which led Sarah to depression, alcoholism, and death. The play is about a young black woman who is lured away from her job in South Africa to tour the world and make lots of money. Once in England, however, she is sold to a show and becomes a star. -
Types of Plays Parks Writes
Parks said "I write plays that are theatrical, performative, language-based and formally challenging while also being interested in human emotions and the human condition. I am most interested in time and how people pass through it. A by-product of time is History - what is remembered, recorded and transported into the next age. History - the destruction and creation of it through theatre pieces and how Black people fit into all of this - is my primary artistic concern." -
The Herb Alpert Award
In 1996, Parks received the Herb Alpert Award for Theater. This award in the Arts is an unrestricted prize of $75,000 given annually to risk-taking mid-career artists working in the fields of dance, film, music, theatre, and the visual arts. -
First Marriage
Parks and Paul Oscher met in 1998, when they were introduced by a mutual friend. "It was love at first sight" Parks said. In 2001, Parks married the blues musician Paul Oscher; they were together for 9 years and divorced in 2010. -
MacArthur Fellowship
Parks is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the "Genius Grant." The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. -
Topdog/Underdog
Topdog/Underdog was produced on July 26, 2001. It's a darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity, 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. Parks won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and a Tony for drama for this play. -
Named among 100 Innovators for the Next Wave
Parks is named among Time Magazine's “100 Innovators for the Next Wave". -
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Her play Topdog/Underdog won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002, she became the first African-American woman to receive the award. After winning the prize, she said "As the first African-American woman to win [this prize], I have to say I wish I was the 101st." On the PBS news program she said that this play was one of the easiest of her plays to write. [She has] written plays that have taken six, seven, eight years, eight, nine, ten, 12 drafts. And this one…took three days." -
365 Days/365 Plays
Parks project 365 Days/365 Plays is where she wrote a play a day for an entire year. It was produced on November 13, 2002, in over 700 theaters worldwide, creating one of the largest grassroots collaborations in theater history. -
American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award
Suzan-Lori Parks received the American Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award at the 2007 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. -
Parks Plays
Despite her popularity as a playwright, Park’s plays are not often produced at theaters that are devoted to staging plays by African Americans because they are considered experimental and unfamiliar. Parks realizes that her plays are not for everyone and that they are “like complex carbohydrates nourishing but difficult to digest” according to the American Theatre. -
Son Patrick
Suzan-Lori Parks only has one child named Patrick, who she had with Christian Konopka. -
Racism and Women Representation
In an interview when asked "Is Hollywood Racist", Parks said, “Yeah, and so is America,... Hollywood [also] doesn’t particularly value the contributions of women. Interesting that neither does the rest of the country on any given day. Hollywood enjoys and seems to encourage crazy violence... Diversity and inclusion are such a pain and I’m a good person when I do it and I’m so annoyed I have to include more roles for women and black people." -
Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
Parks was awarded the 22nd annual Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, which is given to artists who significantly impact their chosen disciplines. This prize was particularly meaningful to Parks not only because it came with $250,000 but because it cuts across artistic disciplines, something she has striven to do in her work, which bridges poetry and music in drama. -
Teaching at NYU
In 2016, Parks started teaching playwriting at the Tisch School of the Arts in the Department of Dramatic Writing at New York University. -
Her Dad Joining The Military
In an interview on 2016, Parks said that her dad joined the military because "at that time the army had just been integrated in the States. And it was one of the few industries that offered black people the possibility of advancement if you did a good job. Most industries didn’t have that then. -
Really Active When Writing
Parks said in an interview with The Interval that she used to move around a lot and dance around when writing. She did that because that made her feel like she was acting all the characters. -
Black Arts Movement
Inspired both by the Black Arts Movement and the postmodern revolt against it, Parks has concentrated on crafting provocative plays that represent and emphasize the concerns and question of identities for African Americans. -
Second Marriage
In 2017, she married her current husband, guitarist Christian Konopka. She met him in an Internet dating site. -
Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award
She received the 2018 Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. This award is given to established playwrights whose body of work has made significant contributions to the American theatre. -
Health Issues
During Covid-19, Parks felt lonely and wanted to connect with others. Parks experienced grief due to the deaths of people she knew personally, who died because of the pandemic. Parks said that grief "is an experience that has a lot of opportunity in it, and is rich." And creation for Parks was a necessary part of getting through the shutdown. -
How Covid-19 affected Parks Writing
Parks was on set as the writer for a TV show that had to go on hiatus when COVID hit. So she started writing a short play a day – plays that would eventually become Plays for the Plague Year. Parks said, "my intention was to write something to help us, to document, to witness, and to help us celebrate when we got back together," and "I thought it was only going to be three weeks." She kept writing for over a year and didn't really know when to stop until someone close to her died of COVID. -
Suzan-Lori Parks Now
Today, Parks is 60 years old and is living in New York with her husband and son. She is teaching at NYU as an Arts Professor on the Washington Square campus. -
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