Visionary playwright and MacArthur “Genius” Award winner Suzan-Lori Parks is the featured speaker at the 2018 Mitchell Artist Lecture. Parks is the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the Broadway hit “Topdog/ Underdog,” and was named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Innovators for the Next New Wave.” She will touch on the topics of creativity, collaboration and her career during the lecture on Tuesday, Oct. 30 at 6-7:30 p.m. in the University of Houston Moores Opera House.
In addition to her extensive playwriting bibliography, including many experimental works, Parks has written screenplays for Brad Pitt and Denzel Washington, “Girl 6” written for Spike Lee and adapted Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” The great writer James Baldwin, declared Parks “an astonishing and beautiful creature who may become one of the most valuable artists of our time.” More information about Suzan-Lori Parks can be found on her website.
Karen Farber, director of the UH Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, expects this to be an inspired and engaging talk.
“Her use of language and fragmented narrative as a means to retell American history is at once harrowing and entertaining,” Farber said. “This talk will be compelling to lovers of drama as well as audiences who have never set foot in a theater, since Parks can speak to the American experience in such unusual, yet universal, terms.”
WHAT: 2018 Mitchell Artist Lecture, presented by the UH Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts
WHO: Suzan-Lori Parks, award-winning playwright
WHEN: 6-7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 30
Admission is free and open to the public, but an RSVP is required.
WHERE: University of Houston Moores Opera House, 3333 Cullen Blvd., Houston, TX 77024
Parking is available in Lot 16B (Click here for map and driving directions).