The America Play

In The America Play, an African-American man leaves his family to pursue his dream of impersonating Lincoln, and spends his life “being shot” by people who wish to reenact Lincoln’s death. Years later, his wife and son, who have inherited the family grave-digging business, dig for his truth and his story. Searingly intelligent, painfully funny, chock-full of (out)rage, this seminal work by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Suzan-Lori Parks deftly deflates received ideas about race and our national story. The play premiered at the Public Theatre in New York.

Suzan-Lori Parks is a playwright, screenwriter and novelist whose plays include Topdog/Underdog (2002 Tony nomination for Best Play), Fucking A, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (1990 Obie Award for Best New American Play), Venus (1996 Obie Award), The Death Of The Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, and In The Blood (2002 Pulitzer Prize finalist), among others. Her work is the subject of the PBS Film The Topdog/Underdog Diaries. She is an alumna of New Dramatists, and has been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She was also the recipient of a Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Award, a CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts (Drama) for 1996 and a Guggenheim Foundation Grant. A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award, Parks received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Topdog/Underdog.