Prototype Issue
Suzan-Lori Parks Services God for Inspiration and Plays Ambassador
By Chris Tsuyuki
(page 1 of 1)Playwright and screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks, who was awarded the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant in 2001 and Pulitzer Prize in 2002, demonstrates how she wards off writers block during a Q&A in Los Feliz recently.
“You gotta use two hands for this,” she said crooking both her arms at a lazy 90 degree angle and turning her head up frantically tickling the air. She calls this “tickling the balls of God.”
She is expressive, disarming and wry; her speech explodes with exclamatory noises. Her collection of 365 Days/365 Plays is being performed by 52 different theaters in LA; seventeen other areas nationally; and in countries like Canada, Australia, China and Kenya. Simultaneously, the same plays are being staged world-wide.
On November 13, 2002, Suzan-Lori got the crazy idea to write a play a day for an entire year. (This is hardly a feat for a woman who wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning play, “Top Dog/Under Dog,” in only three days) She started that day.
A transport from New York, Suzan-Lori followed a job offer west and now resides in Venice.
“There’s a whole thing about Los Angeles. My theory on LA is – it’s like smoking crack. It’s hard to put the pipe down!”
In LA, organizing around the Center Theatre Group, each participating theater performs a week’s worth of plays. Offering free admission, the project will run for 365 days, ending November 13, 2007.
She has given over control of her plays: “Basically, we’re just giving the plays to people and saying ‘Do your thing!’”
“Your thing” has come to be anything from performing a piece in different languages to literally running the audience around to watch a play.
“What’s exciting is that when people do these plays, a little window of opportunity opens up, and it’s not necessarily relative to theatre. It’s relative to whatever is going on in the lives of the people who are participating. Some really cool things have developed,” she says.
“365 Days/365 Plays” is possibly the largest theater collaboration in U.S. history – something that Suzan-Lori does not take lightly.
“My parents always told me, growing up, ‘You are an ambassador for your race.’” Someone asks “Human race? Black people?” Suzan-Lori simply replies, “Both.”
365 Days/365 Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks (2006) Theatre Communications Group, Inc.
Check out www.365inla.com for theater locations and performance dates.
"There's a whole thing about Los Angeles. My theory on LA is it's like smoking crack. It's hard to put the pipe down!"
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