Topdog/Underdog, by Suzan-Lori Parks

Suzan-Lori Parks is a playwright and screenwriter whose plays include TOPDOG/UNDERDOG, FUCKING A, THE DEATH OF THE LAST BLACK MAN IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD, THE SINNERS PLACE, DEVOTEES IN THE GARDEN OF LOVE, BETTING ON THE DUST COMMANDER, IMPERCEPTIBLE MUTABILITIES IN THE THIRD KINGDOM (1990 Obie Award for Best New American Play), THE AMERICA PLAY, VENUS (1996 Obie Award), and IN THE BLOOD. She is an alumnae of New Dramatists, an Associate Artist at Yale Rep and has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, The Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, The W. Alton Jones Foundation, Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, TCG-Pew Charitable Trusts and is a two-time playwriting fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1989 the New York Times named her "The year's most promising new playwright". Earlier this year, she received two awards: The PEN-Laura Pels Award for excellence in playwrighting and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Ms. Parks has been a playwriting professor at universities around the country including The Yale School of Drama and currently runs the Dramatic Writing Program at Cal Arts. Her plays have been published in numerous anthologies, most notably THE BEDFORD INTRODUCTION TO DRAMA (St. Martin's Press), THE BEST OF OFF-BROADWAY (Mentor Books) and MOONMARKED and TOUCHED BY SUN (TCG); a collection of her plays and essays, THE AMERICA PLAY AND OTHER WORKS, is available from Theatre Communications Group. Her first feature film was GIRL 6, directed by Spike Lee. She wrote the screen adaptation of the novel, GAL, for Universal and rewrote GOD'S COUNTRY for Jodie Foster and Egg Pictures, as well as, writing an original Television pilot for Kennedy/Marshall. Upcoming productions include HOOPZ for Disney Theatricals.