Suzan-Lori Parks / Deborah R. Geis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Geis, Deborah R., 1960-

Series:

Michigan modern dramatists

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Parks, Suzan-Lori--Criticism and interpretation.

Parks, Suzan-Lori.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

vi, 176 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2008]

Summary:

Suzan-Lori Parks is one of America's most distinctive playwrights. In 2007 her creation 365 Plays/365 Days was produced in more than seven hundred theaters around the world. She has been named one of Time magazine's "100 Innovators for the Next New Wave" and is a recipient of the MacArthur Award. A former student of James Baldwin, Parks is a prolific author with novels, screenplays, and even a musical to her credit, but she is best known for her plays. Works such as Topdog/Underdog, In the Blood, Venus, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, and The America Play have been widely produced and have won the highest honors (including the Pulitzer Prize and two Obies), but to date, books on Parks have been scarce.

The latest addition to the Michigan Modern Dramatists series offers an indispensable guide to Parks's dramatic works, taking a close look at her major plays and placing them in context. Deborah R. Geis traces the evolution of Parks's art from her earliest experimental pieces to the hugely popular Topdog/Underdog to her wide-ranging forays into fiction, music, and film.

Contents:

Introduction: Under the Piano and All That Jazz: (Biography, Influences, Themes, Style) 1

Elements of Style: Early Plays: (Betting on the Dust Commander, Pickling, Devotees in the Garden of Love) 23

Choral Explorations of Race and Politics: (Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom and The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World) 44

Anatomizing Venus 75

Resurrecting Lincoln: (The America Play and Topdog/Underdog) 97

The "Red Letter" Plays: (In the Blood and Fucking A) 126

365 Plays, "New Black Math," and Other Media 141.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 169-176).

ISBN:

9780472099467

0472099469

9780472069460

0472069462

OCLC:

213385031