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PLAYWRIGHT, NOVELIST AND
SONGWRITER SUZAN-LORI PARKS
TO RECEIVE THE 22nd ANNUAL
DOROTHY AND LILLIAN GISH PRIZE
Award Ceremony Will Take Place on November 30, 2015
at The Public Theater, New York
“It is my desire...to give the
recipients of the prize the recognition they deserve,
to bring attention to their contributions to society and
encourage others
to follow in their path.”—Lillian Gish
The Gish Prize Trust today announced that playwright,
novelist and songwriter Suzan-Lori
Parks has
been selected to receive the 22nd Dorothy
and Lillian Gish Prize, given annually to recognize highly
accomplished artists from all disciplines who have pushed
the boundaries of their art forms, contributed to social
change and paved the way for the next generation.
Established in 1994 through the will of legendary stage and
screen actress Lillian Gish, known as the First Lady of
Cinema, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize is widely
regarded as one of the most prestigious honors given to
artists in the United States and bears one of the largest
cash awards, currently valued at approximately $300,000.
As the recipient of the 2015 Gish Prize, Parks now joins a
roster of honorees that includes Frank Gehry, Bob Dylan,
Arthur Miller, Shirin Neshat, Ornette Coleman, Trisha Brown,
Anna Deavere Smith, Spike Lee and Maya Lin. The Gish Prize
will be presented to Parks on the evening of Monday,
November 30, 2015 at The Public Theater in New York City,
where she has served since 2008 as the institution’s first
Master Writer Chair. The private ceremony, attended by
leaders of the performing arts and literary communities,
will include remarks by Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director of
The Public Theater, and playwright and screenwriter Tony
Kushner. The event will also feature a performance of an
excerpt from Parks’s play Topdog/Underdog featuring
actors Brandon J. Dirden and Jason Dirden, as well as a
musical performance by Parks and bandmate Steven Bargonetti.
Suzan-Lori Parks said, “To be a recipient of the
Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize is a great honor. Past
winners—I’ve been looking up to them and following in their
footsteps for years. And now I’m invited to join them? It’s
brilliantly trippy. And it’s humbling too, getting invited
into this family of artists.”
The first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer
Prize in Drama, Suzan-Lori Parks has created a powerful and
pervasive body of work that has helped define American
theater today. Best known for such groundbreaking dramas asTopdog/Underdog—awarded
the Pulitzer Prize in 2002—and Father
Comes Home From The Wars, Parks’s work challenges
contemporary conceptions of race, sexuality, family and
society, and is distinguished by its striking wordplay,
vibrant wit and uninhibited style. Throughout her career,
Parks has drawn inspiration from a rich blend of literary
and historical traditions to produce her plays, her novel Getting
Mother’s Body (Random
House, 2003) and numerous screenplays, including scripts for
Spike Lee’s Girl
6 and an
adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their
Eyes Were Watching God for
executive producer Oprah Winfrey. In 2007, after writing one
short play every day for a year, Parks undertook one of the
largest and most ambitious grassroots collaborations in
theater history when 365
Days/365 Plays was
produced in more than 700 venues around the world, from
street corners to opera houses. Following the success in
2011 of the Tony Award Winning Broadway production of The
Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, for
which she wrote the script adaptation, Parks has deepened
her involvement with music, performing solo and with her
band at venues around New York City and overseas. She was
named the first Master Writer Chair at The Public Theater in
2008 and currently appears regularly on the mezzanine of the
lobby in the free performance piece Watch
Me Work, a
meditation on the artistic process and actual work session
in which audience members participate by doing their own
writing and then getting feedback and guidance from Parks
about their creative process. Parks also serves as a
visiting arts professor in dramatic writing at New York
University’s Tisch School of the Arts and holds honorary
doctorates from Brown University, among other institutions.
The Gish Prize selection committee chose Suzan-Lori Parks
from among a multidisciplinary group of 54 outstanding
figures nominated by members of the arts community. The
selection committee for 2015 was chair Ella
Baff, newly appointed Senior Program Officer for the
Arts and Cultural Heritage Program for The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation; Russell
Granet, Executive Director of Lincoln Center Education; Kevin
Moriarty, Artistic Director of the Dallas Theater
Center; Mikki
Shepard, Executive Director of the Apollo Theater; and A.M.
Homes, writer.
Ella Baff stated, “Suzan-Lori Parks has, in the words of Ms.
Gish, ‘made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the
world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.’
She has an audacious and vivid imagination. Her writing is a
complex and multi-layered articulation of history, myth,
sexuality and identity told in voices that need to be
heard.”
JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. serves
as trustee of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize Trust.
Speaking for The Philanthropy Centre at J.P. Morgan Private
Bank, Managing Director Jacqueline E. Elias stated, “With
the help of our esteemed selection committee, we have
continued to support Lillian Gish’s vision of recognizing
and celebrating those artists who have made an indelible
impact through their work. In choosing Suzan-Lori Parks,
this year’s committee has underscored the continuing
importance of dramatic writing in giving voice to the
endless variety of human experience and shaping our society,
and has provided substantive support to Ms. Parks’s ongoing
creative endeavors. We congratulate
Suzan-Lori Parks on receiving this high honor.”
About The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
Established in
1994 through the will of Lillian Gish, the Dorothy and
Lillian Gish Prize is given annually to an individual who
has “made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the
world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”
Past recipients, from 1994 through 2014, are Frank Gehry,
Ingmar Bergman, Robert Wilson, Bob Dylan, Isabel Allende,
Arthur Miller, Merce Cunningham, Jennifer Tipton, Lloyd
Richards, Bill T. Jones, Ornette Coleman, Peter Sellars,
Shirin Neshat, Laurie Anderson, Robert Redford, Pete Seeger,
Chinua Achebe, Trisha Brown, Anna Deavere Smith, Spike Lee
and Maya Lin. Prize recipients are nominated by the arts
community and chosen by a distinguished committee of arts
leaders for their groundbreaking work in their chosen
fields. The
Gish Prize selection committee, a group that changes every
year, has included filmmaker Mira Nair, sculptor Martin
Puryear, President Emerita of The Museum of Modern Art Agnes
Gund, President
of the Ford Foundation Darren Walker, and playwright,
librettist and screenwriter David Henry Hwang. For
further information, visit
www.gishprize.com
About Dorothy
and Lillian Gish
Dorothy and Lillian Gish followed their mother onto
the stage at an early age. The older of the two sisters,
Lillian took her first theatrical curtain call in 1902 at
the age of eight in the play In
Convict’s Stripes. In 1912, the sisters’ childhood
friend Mary Pickford introduced them to D.W. Griffith, who
launched their film careers. Lillian would become one of
America’s best-loved actresses and is considered by many the
First Lady of the Screen. In her 85-year career, she
appeared in more than 100 films—from Griffith’s An
Unseen Enemy (1912)
to Lindsay Anderson’s The
Whales of August (1987)—and
also took numerous roles in television and on stage. Dorothy
Gish began her stage career at the age of four and also went
on to make more than 100 films, many of them with Lillian.
Dorothy’s early work in film highlighted her keen sense of
humor, bringing her acclaim as a star of comedy. At the end
of the silent era, she turned her attention to the stage,
where success in Young
Love brought
her accolades with New York audiences, on the road and
subsequently in London. In 1939 Dorothy and Lillian each
played Vinnie Day, wife of Clarence Day, Sr., in two
extensive American road company productions of Life
with Father. Dorothy returned to film and
television in the 1950s. Upon
her death in 1968, Dorothy Gish left the bulk of her estate
to the arts. Lillian Gish died in 1993 and also left the
bulk of her estate to the arts, including a trust for the
formation of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. |