Suzan-Lori Parks
Bio Information
 SUZAN-LORI PARKS is a playwright, screenwriter and novelist whose plays include Topdog/Underdog, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, The America Play, Venus, The Death Of The Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, and In The Blood, among others. Her work is the subject of the PBS Film “The Topdog/Underdog Diaries.” She is an alumnae of New Dramatists, and has been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She was also the recipient of a Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Award, a CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts (Drama) for 1996 and a Guggenheim Foundation Grant. A recipient of a MacArthur Foundaton “Genius” Award, Parks received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Topdog/Underdog.
In November 2002, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks sat down and committed to writing a play a day for the next 365 days. The world premiere of this play cycle will be performed as a yearlong national festival simultaneously in 14 major cities and communities around the country by over 600 theatres in the largest theatre collaboration in U.S. History. 365 Days/365 Plays will be presented in Washington DC, Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, San Francisco and Seattle, along with the Carolinas, Mississippi River towns, and university campuses.
A broad-based coalition of DC-area theatres, in association with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ and Producer Bonnie Metzgar’s 365 National Festival are pleased to announce the year-long world premiere of Parks’ 365 Days/365 Plays, which will feature a different arts organization every week of the year. The council of theatres coordinating this event includes The Studio Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Round House Theatre, Signature Theatre, and African Continuum Theatre Company. 365 Days/365 Plays runs from November 13, 2006 to November 12, 2007. A full week-by-week schedule can be found below.
Participating organizations range from the city’s largest theatrical institutions to brand new performing arts organizations, from dance companies to colleges and universities. Each organization is responsible for one week¡¦s worth of plays. Each organization will interpret and produce their seven plays in ways that reflect their own mission, audience and interests. The performances will range from site-specific guerrilla theatre to coffee-house readings to full productions.
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