Suzan-Lori Parks

Although Betting on the Dust Commander was not the first play Parks wrote, it was the first of her plays to be produced. Her first play The Sinner's Place, which she wrote for her senior project at Mount Holyoke, was rejected for production by her college's drama department as they considered it too experimental since she wanted to have dirt on the stage during the performance.[20] When her second play, Betting on the Dust Commander, first premiered, it ran for three nights in a bar in Manhattan's Lower East Side called Gas Station.[21] It is a short, one-act play set in Kentucky, centering around the lives of a couple, Mare and Lucius, who have been married for 110 years. Parks's unique voice is displayed throughout the text via her use of specific dialect and incorporation of the sounds of sniffling and sneezing as part of the dialogue. The play's title comes from the horse that won the Kentucky Derby in 1970, Dust Commander. As the play goes on, we discover that Dust Commander's Derby is responsible for bringing Mare and Lucius together, and through the couple's discussion of him they think back over their many years of memories together. The motif of dust along with many of the play's lines are intentionally repeated throughout the text. In addition to this Parks does not give the audience any information on how these two characters have managed to live for so long. In this way she destabilizes any linear sense of memory and time. Parks complicates the audience's view of history, relationships, and the past; some argue that Parks's incorporation of these elements and the repetitive style of the text is reminiscent of African rituals and the way that their retelling of stories often incorporate the past in a literal manner.[22][23]

One of her best-known works is Topdog/Underdog. This play marked a departure from the heightened language she usually wrote. Parks is an admirer of Abraham Lincoln and believed he left a legacy for descendants of slaves. Topdog/Underdog explains what that legacy is. It tells the story of two African-American brothers: Lincoln and Booth. Lincoln works at a boardwalk arcade, dressing up like Abraham Lincoln and letting the tourists shoot him with plastic guns. He got this job because he could be paid less than the white man who had the job before. Parks does not judge Lincoln in this play, but rather enjoys bringing him into the other characters' lives and seeing how they are affected. She said, "Lincoln is the closest thing we have to a mythic figure. In days of Greek drama, they had Apollo and Medea and Oedipus – these larger than life figures that walked the earth and spoke – and they turned them into plays. Shakespeare had kings and queens that he fashioned into his stories. Lincoln, to me, is one of those." Parks also believes that Lincoln "created an opening with that hole in his head." She makes the case that everything we do has to pass through everything else, like the eye of a needle. She says we have all passed through the hole in Lincoln's head on our journey to whatever lies ahead. Like many of her other plays, Topdog/Underdog takes her characters on a quest to find out who they are and to examine the stories and experiences that have shaped their lives. More than anything, she believes that we have an important relationship with the past.[24]

Parks decided that she wanted to give herself the task of writing 365 plays in 365 days, hence her play 365 Plays/365 Days. This decision was made shortly after one of her books, Getting Mother's Body, was published. She kept herself on schedule and succeeded. She wrote anywhere she had to: on the road, hotel rooms, and modes of transportation. The result has been produced by more than 700 theaters around the world.[25]

The plays were presented by 725 performing arts groups, taking turns until the entire cycle was performed. The performances started in 2006, and included venues such as the Denver Center Theatre Company, colleges in England and Australia and the Steel City Theatre Company in Pueblo, Colorado.[26] Other venues were the Steppenwolf Theatre Company and the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles. The plays were presented at the Public Theater, New York City in November 2006, directed by Michael Greif.[27]

Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3 premiered off-Broadway at the Public Theater in a developmental production in March 2014 and a full production that fall. Directed by Jo Bonney, the cast featured Sterling K. Brown, Louis Cancelmi, Peter Jay Fernandez, Russell G. Jones, and Jacob Ming-Trent.[28] Jacob Ming-Trent won the 2015 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play[29] and Parks won the 2015 Obie Award for playwriting presented by the American Theater Wing.[30] The play, which takes place during the American Civil War, is presented in three parts: Part 1, A Measure of a Man; Part 2, The Battle in the Wilderness; and Part 3, The Union of My Confederate Parts.[31] From September 15 to October 22, 2016, the play had its London premiere at the Royal Court in a transfer of the Public Theatre production directed by Jo Bonney. The cast featured Steve Toussaint, Nadine Marshall, Leo Wringer, Sibusiso Mamba, Tom Bateman, and Jimmy Akingbola.[32]

The play was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Pulitzer committee wrote: "A distinctive and lyrical epic about a slave during the Civil War that deftly takes on questions of identity, power and freedom with a blend of humor and dignity."[33]

Two plays produced at the same time. Telling different stories with themes from The Scarlet Letter such as the ideas of sex, love, society, and power. The Red Letter Plays: Fucking A & In the Blood. Both plays have a mother named Hester struggling in a society where they put her in the role of outcast.[34] Both mothers face difficult challenges brought on by power struggles, society, sexism, and love. The first play In the Blood premiered in 1999 following the story of a penniless mother of five. Hester is condemned by the men who once loved her. Hester is trying to help someone to make her children's lives better while living in poverty. She has a reputation in the town as a "slut" on her, which is affecting her chance at making a better life for her kids. Hester seizes the opportunity to receive help from her children's fathers, with hopes that one may help them. In the Blood was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Originally Parks wanted to title 'In the Blood' Fucking A. Later Parks writes Fucking A in 2000 which tells the story of Hester, an "abortionist" trying to free her son from jail.[20][35]

In 2017, Signature Theatre Company produced these two plays in the same season. Parks said, "They were conceived from the same idea but until now have lived very separate lives. I can’t wait to participate in the dialogue that will come from witnessing these two works in concert."[36] The two plays can be viewed separately and the audience member would get a whole picture but watched together displays Parks' work from over two decades ago create conversation with a new audience.

In October 2022, Sally & Tom, a play about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, began performances at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.[37]

Plays for the Plague Year, described by the New York Times as "Parks’s diaristic musings on the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic and a coincident string of deaths, including those of Black Americans killed by police officers," was scheduled for a November 2022 premiere at Joe's Pub, with Parks onstage singing and starring.[37]

The Harder They Come, Parks' musical adaptation of the 1972 Jamaican reggae film was scheduled to be staged at the Public Theater in early 2023.[37]

• Girl 6 (1996)
• Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005)
• Native Son (2019)
• The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

• "Suzan-Lori Parks's Aha! Moment". May 2003. Archived from the original on 2008-01-13.
• "Commencement Speech to the Mount Holyoke College Class of 2001". Mount Holyoke College. 27 May 2001. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• "An Equation for Black People Onstage." In The America Play and Other Works, 19–22. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995.
• "From the Elements of Style." In The America Play and Other Works, 6–18. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995.
• "Possession." In The America Play and Other Works, 3–5. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995.
• "Tradition and the Individual Talent." Theater 29.2 (1999): 26–33.

• Getting Mother's Body: A Novel. New York: Random House. 2003. ISBN 1-4000-6022-2.