Upcoming: 365 Days/365 Plays (selections) by Suzan-Lori Parks, Southwestern University, September 27 - 30

Selections from


365 Days/365 Plays
by Suzan-Lori Parks
directed by Lisa Byrd

September 27 – 30, 2012

8 p.m. Thursday, Friday &Saturday ; 3 p.m. Sunday
Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones Theater
Tickets $8 - $14

As an experiment, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks wrote a play each day for a year. More than 700 theater groups performed selections of her 365 Days/365 Plays. The pieces are playful, occasionally dark, and frequently challenging. The subject matter ranges from presidents to deities to soldiers. This production is for mature audiences, adult language and subject matter.

There will be a special post-show talk after each performance. Where the audience has the opportunity to interact with the cast and creative team.


About the playwright:

Named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Innovators for the Next New Wave”. In 2002, she became the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for her play Topdog/Underdog. Her first feature-length screenplay was Girl 6 written for Spike Lee. She’s also written screenplays for Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, Jodi Foster, and Oprah Winfrey.
Reviews:
“an astonishing and beautiful creature who may become one of the most valuable artists of our time.” – James Baldwin
“Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the most important dramatists America has produced.”—Tony Kushner
“…one of the American theater’s most wily and innovative writers, and her stark but poetic language and fiercely idiosyncratic images transform her work into something haunting and marvelous” – TIME

Suzan-Lori Parks will also be Southwestern University’s guest lecturer at this year’s Writer’s Voice, on Tuesday, November 13, 2012.

For information on our 2012-13 Season visit us at
http://www.southwestern.edu/departments/theatre/productions/index.php
For tickets call the Box Office at 512.863.1378 or purchase online at www.southwestern.tix.com

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

The Book of Grace by Suzan-Lori Parks, Zach Theatre, June 2 - July 20

The marketing strategy of putting the playwright on the poster bothers me. It's a feeling made all the sharper by the Zach Theatre's importing of MacArthur 'Genius Grantee' Suzan-Lori Parks twice over the past six months for sessions entitled "Watch Me Work." The public was invited to watch Parks write -- at a desk? on a computer? on a yellow legal pad? -- for most of an hour, following which she had an exchange with the spectators. Now, that does not at all fit my concept or my requirements for writing; I find that I have to assume something of a hypnotic trance before the computer screen, capturing thoughts and words as if I were hunting elusive butterflies with a keyboard. I may well be wrong, for I didn't attend, but "Watch Me Work" seemed a bit too glam or too cult, the equivalent of displaying the playwright in the shop window.

The Zach has continued that "See The Playwright" marketing, even including in the program an insert with Dave Steakley's interview of Parks.

I didn't read it. Parks seems in Kirk Tuck's rehearsal pictures and in the Zach's videos to be a pleasant and intelligent person, but the identity of the playwright is not what lures me into the theatre. In similar fashion, David Mamet's newly celebrated political conversion from leftish to glowering rightish is frankly irrelevant in my mind to the performance of his work.

Parks' play The Book of Grace first went on stage at the Public Theatre in New York in April, 2010. The Zach Theatre recruited Parks herself to direct the play in this "definitive" version, playing now until July 20. The published play script will be the text used in this production. Parks was evidently still adjusting it during rehearsal . The program advised that there would be no intermission but the Steakley insert informed us correctly that there were two acts with a fifteen-minute intermission.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: The Book of Grace, Suzan-Lori Parks, Zach Theatre, June 2 - July 20

Found on-line:

presents

The Book of Grace

by Suzan-Lori Parks, directed by the playwright

June 2 - July 20

Wednesdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m.

Click to purchase tickets on-line

Step into the imaginative playground of Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks for an extremely rare opportunity -- the first production of her new play directed by Ms. Parks herself!

A South Texas family breaks through familial borders when a young man named Snake returns home, lured by his stepmother Grace, to reunite with his father, a border patrol agent. The prodigal son confronts his father, and fences are erected as everyday life erupts into a battle for personal survival. At once fiercely intimate and explosive, this surprising and truly original play finds three people bound together by longing, passion and ambition.

Performance Images by Andy Berkovsky: Top Dog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks, City Theatre, February 17 - March 13

Performance images by Andy Berkovsky, received directly from the City Theatre:

The City Theatre presents

TOPDOG/ UNDERDOG

by Suzan-Lori Parks

directed by Lisa Jordan, featuring Richard Romeo and McArthur Moore

February 17 – March 13, Thursdays – Saturdays 8:00 p.m., Sundays 5:30 p.m.

produced in honor of Black History Month.

The City Theatre. 3823 Airport Blvd. 78757 – east corner of Airport Blvd. and 38 ½ Street, behind the Shell station. (click for map)

Reservations 512-524-2870 or info@citytheatreaustin.org

The City Theatre is proud to open its 2011 season with one of the hottest new plays in American drama, Topdog/Underdog, written by Suzan–Lori Parks and winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. Produced in honor of Black History Month, performances begin February 17 and run through March 13 at The City Theatre.

“There’s more to me than some cheap hustle.”

Click to view additional images from Top Dog/Underdog at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Images by Aleks Ortynski: Top Dog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks, City Theatre, February 17- March 13

Images by Aleks Ortynski, received directly:

The City Theatre presents

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

by Suzan-Lori Parks

directed by Lisa Jordan, featuring Richard Romeo and McArthur Moore

February 17 – March 13, Thursdays – Saturdays 8:00 p.m., Sundays 5:30 p.m.

produced in honor of Black History Month.

The City Theatre. 3823 Airport Blvd. 78757 – east corner of Airport Blvd. and 38 ½ Street, behind the Shell station. (click for map)

Reservations 512-524-2870 or info@citytheatreaustin.org

The City Theatre is proud to open its 2011 season with one of the hottest new plays in American drama, Topdog/Underdog, written by Suzan–Lori Parks and winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. Produced in honor of Black History Month, performances begin February 17 and run through March 13 at The City Theatre.

“There’s more to me than some cheap hustle.”

Click to view additional images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Top Dog/Underdog, City Theatre, February 17 - March

Received directly:

The City Theatre presents

TOPDOG/

UNDERDOG

by Suzan-Lori Parks

directed by Lisa Jordan

featuring Richard Romeo and McArthur Moore

February 17 – March 13

Thursdays – Saturdays 8:00 p.m., Sundays 5:30 p.m.

produced in honor of Black History Month.

The City Theatre. 3823 Airport Blvd. 78757 – east corner of Airport Blvd. and 38 ½ Street.

Reservations 512-524-2870 or info@citytheatreaustin.org

www.citytheatreaustin.org

The City Theatre is proud to open its 2011 season with one of the hottest new plays in American drama, Topdog/Underdog, written by Suzan–Lori Parks and winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. Produced in honor of Black History Month, performances begin February 17 and run through March 13 at The City Theatre.

“There’s more to me than some cheap hustle.”

Cain and Abel. Jacob and Esau. Stories of brothers at odds and family identity go back a long way and Park’s darkly comic fable is a potent, raw and disturbing reminder of such conflict. The play tells the story of Lincoln, a retired master of the three-card street hustle, and Booth, a master thief, two African American brothers whose names were given to them as a joke by their father and who share a lifetime of hard times, played out and explored in a one-room apartment that is their field of unrealized dreams. Haunted by a past of abandonment and struggles, the brothers are forced to confront the shattering reality of their family’s history and its future. Park’s play has the vision and beat of a good jazz piece as Lincoln and Booth come to terms with their past and present lives. It is a brisk, bracing, volcanic and compelling two-hander that is illuminated by the smarts and poetry of the street.

The production stars Richard Rashad Romeo (Fences, Death and the King’s Horseman) and McArthur Moore, (A Raisin the Sun, Fences, Hamlet) with direction by City Theatre guest artist Lisa Jordan.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Watch Me Work, Suzan-Lori Parks at Zach Theatre, December 8 - 11

Received directly:

ZACH Theatre presents SUZAN-LORI PARKS in

WATCH ME WORK

ZACH Theatre’s Nowlin Rehearsal Studio (adjacent to ZACH’s Whisenhunt Stage) at 1426 Toomey Road

WHEN:
WATCH ME WORK Sessions:
Wednesday, December 8 from 6 – 7:15 p.m.
Thursday, December 9 from 11 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

Friday, December 10 from 5 – 7 p.m. (Songwriter Showcase Happy Hour -- see below)

Saturday, December 11 from 11 a.m. – 12:15 p.m

Admission is free for all Suzan-Lori Parks WATCH ME WORK events and open to the public. For additional information go to http://www.zachtheatre.org/special-events or call ZACH’s box office at (512) 476-0541, x1.

This performance piece, a meditation on the artistic process and an actual work session, features Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks working on her latest project live at ZACH Theatre in three intimate work sessions. The WATCH ME WORK sessions will take place on select days in ZACH’s Nowlin Rehearsal Studio, adjacent to the Whisenhunt Stage on Toomey Road. The audience is invited to come join Suzan-Lori up-close and personal to get some of their own writing done at the tables provided around her workspace. Working on writing a short story? A poem? A play? A novel? Song lyrics? ... Whatever you are working on, all writing assignments are welcome. Or, simply come watch Ms. Parks as she creates her newest writing and share the space with other Austin writers. During the last fifteen minutes of each performance, Ms. Parks will answer any questions the audience might have regarding their own work and their creative process.

Each performance is free and open to the public.

The sessions will also be broadcast live on ZACH's website, and you are invited to tweet your questions for Suzan-Lori to answer during the last 15 minutes of the work session. Please use the hashtag #newplay @zachtheatre.

Named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Innovators for the Next New Wave,” Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the most acclaimed playwrights in American drama today. She is the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for the Broadway hit Topdog/Underdog and is a MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient. In 2007 her 365 Plays/365 Days was produced in more than 700 theaters worldwide, creating the largest grassroots collaboration in theater history. She is the first recipient of the master writer chair at the Public Theater, a three-year residency in which she is also a visiting arts professor in dramatic writing at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Suzan-Lori Parks will be in residence at ZACH Theatre to direct her new play The Book of Grace from June 2 - July 10, 2011. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

SONGWRITER SHOWCASE HAPPY HOUR
Friday, December 10 from 5 – 7 p.m.
Austin Singer/Songwriters are invited to join Suzan-Lori Parks for an open-mic Happy Hour Showcase hosted by ZACH. Come share two or three songs with an appreciative audience on ZACH’s Kleberg Stage along with new music from Suzan-Lori sung by the playwright herself! Informal, friendly, supportive and fun! ZACH’s cash bar will be open, and drinks are welcome inside the theatre.