UB Events Devoted To Pulitzer Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The work of African-American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, one of the most acclaimed and exciting playwrights working today, will be the focus of two free public events at the University at Buffalo on April 26 and 27.

Parks is only 42, but has won two Obies, a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant for her audacious, multi-layered, historically aware and linguistically complicated plays, many of which are taught in drama schools throughout the country.

She is known as well for her academic publications, screenplays, teleplays, plays for radio, essays, collections and for her critically acclaimed and wildly original novel "Getting Mother's Body" (2004).

UB will present a performance of "Week #24" of Parks' play cycle, "365 Days/365 Plays" on April 26 and 27 at 5:30 p.m. in 278 Center for the Arts on the UB North (Amherst) Campus. It will be preceded by a reception at 5 p.m.

The performances are part of an ongoing national festival in which more than 700 theaters around the country are producing all 365 short plays in Parks' cycle.

In 2002 Park won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play "Topdog/Underdog," about a three-card monte player named Booth, and his brother, who plays Abraham Lincoln in whiteface at a sideshow where customers pretend to assassinate him. She says one of her aims is to "defeat the 'Theatre of Schmaltz,'" which she describes as "the play-as-wrapping-paper-version-of-hot-newspaper-headline."

Amy Holzapfel, assistant professor in the UB Department of Theatre and Dance, says all members of the UB and Buffalo communities are invited to attend both the play and seminar. She says both will be of interest to high school and college students in particular; a study guide will be provided for the two play performances.

The seminar, "A Symposium on the Theatre of Suzan-Lori Parks," at 3 p.m. April 26, will offer a round-table discussion of Park's theater featuring Rena Fraden, Ph.D., and Shawn-Marie Garrett, Ph.D. It will be held in the Screening Room, 112 Center for the Arts on the North Campus.

Fraden is dean of the faculty, vice president for academic affairs and G. Keith Funston Professor of English and American Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn. Her scholarly work centers on the intersection of art and social justice. Among her many publications are the books "Imagining Medea: Rhodessa Jones and Theater for Incarcerated Women" and "Blueprints for a Black Federal Theater."

Shawn-Marie Garrett is an assistant professor of theater and history at Barnard College. She has published several articles on Parks and her work, and is the author of the forthcoming book, "Suzan-Lori Parks' History Plays."

The two events are sponsored by the UB departments of African-American Studies, Computer Science and Engineering, English, Media Study, Theatre and Dance and the Office of the Vice President for Research and the Dean's Office, College of Arts and Sciences, and the Intermedial Performance Studio, the ongoing mission of which is to integrate digital technology, interactive fiction, virtual reality and embodied performance gives the play new dimensions through the use digital characters, audience interaction, and live dancers and actors.