365 Days / 365 Plays
by Suzan-Lori Parks
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Book Summary Information
Author: Suzan-Lori ParksEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-11-29
ISBN: 1559362863
Number of pages: 426
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
Book Reviews of 365 Days / 365 Plays
Book Review: An Uneven Stroll Through the Parks
Summary: 4 Stars
Listen up: Brilliant writer -- Mount Holyoke, MacArthur genius grant, Pulitzer Prize, she's da bomb, all right? -- lives with her cats and her blues-musician husband in Venice (that's L.A.'s Venice), wakes up on Nov. 13, 2002, decides it'd be a good idea to write a play every day for a year (no exceptions), and she's honing her craft but this is also the run-up to the war in Iraq so of course a lot of her one-page sketches bash Bush real; husband says "cool," next thing you know there are theaters doing weeks and months of her 365-play cycle all over the country. (Got it goin' on right now in Seattle.) But in the meantime, you can enjoy this book -- which has its bland patches, sure (I sympathize with whoever has to perform the September plays) -- but Suzan-Lori Parks didn't learn from James Baldwin how to write drama like *Topdog/Underdog* for nothin'. At their best, Parks' playlets are miniature lessons in how to write for the stage.
Parks has her fixations -- Abraham Lincoln (he lives to age 89); arms that are frozen before the knife can kill; racial injustice; literalized metaphors (an actual Window of Opportunity that actually closes shut); stage directions that can never be enacted; playing possum; plutocracy ("The Presidents Day Sale"); warmonger dictators -- but it's interesting to watch her ring her themes' changes.
Many plays are startling and compact, with topics like watching over a sleeping stranger as an image of compassion ("The 1st Constant"); spoofing Neil Simon ("Barefoot and Pregnant in the Park"); Bush murdering his own soldier and calling it "poignant" ("House to House"); mothers protecting and relinquishing their children ("Behind the Veil of the Goddess"); breaking the cycle of poverty and crime ("My Father Was a Famous Mother"); women and men always failing to get along ("Epic Bio-Pic," "Vase" and "Bear"); representing despair and its cure metaphorically ("Plenty"); and ridiculing sectarian war ("Everybody's Got an Aunt Jemimah").
Some plays overlap; some plays interrupt others; and some of Suzan-Lori Parks' plays stretch people's minds out to infinity.
Summary of 365 Days / 365 Plays
"Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the most important dramatists America has produced."-Tony Kushner
"The plan was that no matter what I did, how busy I was, what other commitments I had, I would write a play a day, every single day for a year. It would be about being present and being committed to the artistic process every single day, regardless of the weather.' It became a daily meditation, a daily prayer celebrating the rich and strange process of a writing life."-Suzan-Lori Parks
On November 13, 2002, the incomparable Suzan-Lori Parks got an idea to write a play every day for a year. She began that very day, finishing one year later. The result is an extraordinary testament to artistic commitment. This collection of 365 impeccably crafted pieces, each with its own distinctive characters and dramatic power, is a complete work by an artist responding to her world, each and every day. Parks is one of the American theater's most wily and innovative writers, and her "stark but poetic language and fiercely idiosyncratic images transform her work into something haunting and marvelous" (TIME).
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