Suzan-Lori Parks Signature Theatre 2016-17 Residency One Playwright

Suzan-Lori Parks is expanding her resume and her theatrical reach as she is named the 2016-17 Residency One Playwright at the Signature Theatre.

According the Signature website, Parks had this to say:

“I’m thrilled to be joining Signature next season as their Residency One playwright! I’m very moved that the righteous Jim Houghton has chosen me to be included in the long list of incredible artists whose works have been explored by Signature over the past 25 years. It’s admirable, isn’t it, how Signature puts the writer at the center of the creative process. Yeah, I’m looking forward to digging in, resurrecting my body of work, taking a fresh look at it with an exciting group of artistic collaborators, and wow, sharing the experience with audiences old and new.”

The Signature Theater devotes a full season of work to one playwright. The company takes an in-depth look at an artists body of work and creates pieces from new and old works from a writer. This is a fantastic opportunity to revisit one of our great theatrical voices.

Most people recognize Parks from her 2002 Pulitzer Prize winning play Top Dog/Under Dog which originally starred Jeffrey Wright and Don Cheadle and then Wright and Mos Def on Broadway.

Her latest work, Father Comes Home From the Wars Parts 1, 2 & 3, won an Obie Award for Excellence Off-Broadway. Along with her plays, Parks is a renown public speaker who gives several commencement speeches each year. Her words are part enlightenment and part creative guidebook.

Her “Watch me Work” Project, in which fans and spectators watch the prolific playwright and her process in a public space, has garnered lots of attention and thousands of views on YouTube.

Her past work includes The Book of Grace, In the Blood (a 2000 Pulitzer Prize finalist), Venus, (1996 OBIE Award), The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Fucking A, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, and The America Play.

Past residencies have included Katori Hall, and Regina Taylor.  We are so excited to see the collaboration with this great playwright and this great theater.