“The Year of Suzan-Lori Parks” is about to begin in Denver.
It took area theater companies 15 years before anyone dared to build a nest for the acclaimed playwright’s distinctive voice on a local stage. But one Pulitzer Prize and a shout-out from Oprah Winfrey later, and Parks is about to be heard all over town.
“I ought to just move there, huh?” Parks said with an easygoing laugh from Los Angeles.
First up is the Shadow Theatre Company’s regional premiere of Parks’ 2002 Pulitzer-winning “Top Dog/Underdog,” opening Thursday. This summer Parks, who heads the dramatic-writing program at the California Institute of the Arts, will mentor teen playwrights in the Curious Theatre Company’s New Voices project. And on Nov. 14, she will be featured in the Pen & Podium lecture series at the Newman Center.
All of which leads to March, when Curious opens its world premiere of “The War Anthology,” an unprecedented original collaboration including three Pulitzer winners (with Tony Kushner and Paula Vogel), each contributing a piece on America at war.
“So if you get sick of me,” Parks said, “it’s all you guys’ fault.”
Parks, picked by Winfrey to adapt Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” for a recent network TV broadcast, is overjoyed that the first local production of “Top Dog” has fallen into the bosom of Shadow, Colorado’s only fully functioning black theater company.
“I want to say to Shadow, ‘Godspeed and right on, my brothers and sisters, and thank you for doing my play,’ ” she said.
Shadow ought say, “Back at you.” Landing “Top Dog” is the greatest coup in its eight-year history, because small companies just don’t often get first shots at Pulitzer winners. The Denver Center and any number of other companies would have had to pass first. Parks doesn’t take that as a snub because, she said, “it’s at the right place.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “I’ve been like this from the moment I started writing: Instead of sitting around wondering why some city or another isn’t doing my play, I’m thrilled when anybody does, because they are the people who should be doing it.”
The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art became the first to stage a Parks play in Colorado, “Venus,” in late 2003. The LIDA Project followed a few weeks later with “F***in’ A.” But “Top Dog” trumps them all.
“I’m thrilled Shadow gets to do a play they love and really want to do, and if they get some visibility in the community for doing so, that’s absolutely perfect,” Parks said. “It’s one of those really lucky, fated coincidences. I am so pleased for them.”
“Top Dog” is a dark fable about the greed and jealousy that separate two black brothers named Lincoln and Booth by their father as a joke. Both are inner-city hustlers in a story that mixes fantasy, myth, comedy, history and street life.
“Suzan-Lori is a fresh and exciting voice who offers introspection into the lives of people who don’t usually get much thought otherwise,” said Shadow artistic director and “Top Dog” star Jeffrey Nickelson. “So often people don’t want to deal with the throwaway people, but she puts them on the stage, where suddenly they become human and alive.”
As a black woman, Parks often is called into a debate about the future of black theater in America. It is an issue of particular concern in Denver, where so much rides on Shadow’s fortunes. But “Top Dog” is not intrinsically black theater. If anything, its timeless themes are downright Greek.
“‘Top Dog’ is all about giving people opportunities, and not just theaters, but actors,” Parks said. “Funny enough, it’s been done in Germany with white guys, and in India with Indian women. The thing I keep learning over and over – which I guess means that I never really learned it – is that it’s for everybody who’s ever had a family. Or never had a family. At the heart of it, sure, it’s written for black men. But wonderfully enough, its heart is universal.”
Parks, 40, was born in Kentucky and moved often as an Army brat. She was lured into her two upcoming Curious projects by associate artistic director Bonnie Metzgar, who accrued considerable clout in her eight years at New York’s Public Theatre – clout she wasn’t afraid to use on Parks.
“When Bonnie asks me to do something, I have a difficult time saying no,” Parks said. “We’ve been making fun of each other for almost 20 years, and so when she makes me an offer, I just can’t refuse. But I go so willingly, because when she’s involved in something, it’s always something groovy.”
For “The War Anthology,” each writer will select a photo depicting an American conflict from the past 100 years and go from there. It will be far more interesting, Parks promised, than a simple anti-war diatribe.
“This project means a lot to me because my father was a career Army officer, and he passed away recently,” Parks said. “So this is not a cut-and-dried, ‘war is bad’ kind of thing for me. It’s much more complicated. And hopefully that’s going to make it that much more interesting.”
Parks has no idea yet what will become of “The War Anthology,” but Vogel and Kushner are old friends, “and so I’m going to show up, and I am going to be happy to be there with people I love,” she said. “And I can’t wait to see what happens from there.”
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“Top Dog/Underdog”
DRAMA|Shadow Theatre Company, 1420 Ogden St.|Written by Suzan-Lori Parks|Directed by Hugo Jon Sayles|Starring Jeffrey Nickelson and Damion Hoover|THROUGH JULY 2|Opens Thursday, then 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays (no shows June 4 or 18)|$25|303-837-9355
