Topdog/Underdog Suzan-Lori Parks

George Santayana’ s oft-quoted aphorism—“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”—has entered cultural ubiquity and become a cliché, paraphrased ad nauseam by politicians and philosophically-inclined college students. Still,...

In her two decades as a playwright, Suzan-Lori Parks has tackled American history from many angles; while she shuffles themes of race, family, death, and time between each of her plays, they are all linked by the common structure of what she calls...

Through the writing and reception of her play Topdog/Underdog, Suzan Lori Parks sheds light on the notion that norms may either challenge the individual to surpass expectation, or they may limit one’s perceived identity to fit what is considered a...

Suzan-Lori Parks once explained that her play Topdog/Underdog “isn’t just confined to a man’s experience,” furthermore, “I think it’s about what it means to be family and, in the biggest sense, the family of man, what it means to be connected with...