Historical context

Page by Mya Oliver

Suzan-Lori Parks

     

•  Born 1963
•  Father was in the military(living abroad helped her reassess her identity as an African American woman)
•  Black power movement
• Taught by James Baldwin (black identity in American society)
• Influenced by Amiri Baraka
• Studied playwrights such as Ntozake Shange and Adrienne Kennedy 
• Negro Ensemble Company

American &African American Theatre

• By the 1980s and early 1990s, black theatre, while still struggling, was becoming an accepted part of the American Mainstream, with well-trained playwrights, directors, designers, and actors turning out quality work on Broadway and elsewhere.
• Music and Dance represented a break from the predominantly realist family dramas that had dominated black theatre
• American Drama and theatre reflected the heightened awareness of gender identity and ethnicity in the 1990s   

The America Play

Written in 1993

• Black identity in America
• Non-realist family drama 
• Symbolism
• Style: Repetition and revision- Black jazz music as representative of the African-American oral tradition (church services)
• Elongated and heightened rests

Citations

• https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-history-milestones
• https://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/genres/african-american-theatre-iid-2479
• https://www.mit.edu/activities/thistle/v9/9.01/6blackf.html
• https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/suzan-lori-parks-44
• https://www.britannica.com/art/Western-theatre/Theatre-of-the-20th-century-and-beyond#ref274734
• http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1625/literary-repetition-and-revision-as-healing-harryette-mullen-and-suzan-lori-parkss-collective-solution-to-historical-trauma