Bay Area Theater

Playwright Interview: Suzan-Lori Parks, 2003

This is the second in a series of playwright interviews. Suzan Lori-Parks was the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for playwrighting, for Topdog/Underdog in 2001. She won Obie Awards for her play, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, produced in 1989, and for Venus in 1998. Richard Wolinsky spoke with Suzan- Lori Parks when she was on tour for her only novel to date, Getting Mother’s Body, On May 20th, 2003. Since that time, she has continued to work in theatre, adapting the book of Porgy & Bess for a 2012 Broadway production, writing Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts One, Two and Three) in 2014 and won an Obie Award in 2019 for her play White Noise. Both these plays have recently been produced in the San Francisco Bay Area. She also wrote the screenplay for the 2019 film Native Son. Photos copyrright 2018 Suzan-Lori Parks.