Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks

Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks

Winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

A darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity is Suzan-Lori Parks latest riff on the way we are defined by history. The play tells the story of Lincoln and Booth, two brothers whose names were given to them as a joke, foretelling a lifetime of sibling rivalry and resentment. Haunted by the past, the brothers are forced to confront the shattering reality of their future.

Suzan-Lori Parks is the author of numerous plays, including In the Blood and Venus. She is currently head of the A.S.K. Theater Projects Writing for Performance Program at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.

Suzan-Lori Parks won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002 for her play Topdog/Underdog, making her the first African-American woman to do so. Father Returns Home from the Battles (Parts 1, 2, and 3), In the Blood, Venus, The Death of the Last Black Man in the World, Fucking A, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, and The America Play are some of her other works. Her 365 Days/365 Plays was performed in over 700 theaters around the world in 2007. Parks is a MacArthur Fellow and the Public Theater's Master Writing Chair. She won the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama in 2018.