PARKS' AVENUE PLAYWRIGHT SHARES HER PROFESSIONAL EXPERTISE WITH CALARTS STUDENTS.Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Writer If and when CalArts playwriting play·writ·ing also play·wright·ing n. The writing of plays. students Matthew Deegan and Patty Cachapero get to New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of this summer, they'll find free tickets to a production of ``Topdog/Underdog'' waiting for them. All in all, not a bad freebie free·bie also free·bee n. Slang An article or service given free: "such freebies as subway and bus maps" New York. . The new play, opening this week at the famed Joseph Papp
Early life Cheadle was born in Kansas City, Missouri to Donald Cheadle, a child psychologist, and Betty, a bank manager and a and Jeffrey Wright as a pair of brothers named Booth and Lincoln. The production is directed by the Public's renowned artistic director, George C. Wolfe. Hot ticket or no, Deegan and Cachapero have an in. ``Topdog's'' playwright is their California Institute of the Arts California Institute of the Arts known as CalArts U.S. private institution of higher learning in Valencia. Created in 1961 through the merger of two other art institutes, it was the first in the U.S. instructor, Suzan-Lori Parks. Until the fall semester begins, when a new pair of playwriting students come in, they are her only students. Of course, if they do take in ``Topdog/Underdog,'' Deegan and Cachapero wouldn't exactly be following their teacher's example. Parks doesn't get out much, whether she's at school in Valencia, at the leased home in Venice she shares with her musician husband, Paul Oscher, or back home in New York. Frequently she misses productions of her own plays, which are performed at major regional theaters throughout the country. ``Every week there's something happening here and they're free to go to anything, and there are lot of things happening in the Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. community,'' said Parks, munching a quick between-classes lunch in her office at CalArts during the last week of the spring semester. ``Yeah, sure, I encourage them to get exposed to what interests them as it comes along, but don't feel like they have to turn into some sort of culture vulture vulture, common name for large birds of prey of temperate and tropical regions. The Old World vultures (family Accipitridae) are allied to hawks and eagles; the more ancient American vultures and condors are of a different family (Cathartidae) with distant links to .'' ``Matthew brought in an article on (playwright) August Wilson August Wilson (April 27, 1945—October 2, 2005) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright. Wilson's singular achievement and literary legacy is a cycle of ten plays—two of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama—dubbed "The Pittsburgh Cycle". that said August Wilson has seen, like, a total of 12 plays, and Matthew cracked up. I'm not really great about getting out there and seeing lots and lots of plays because I sit at home and write all the time.'' Indeed she does. There's ``Topdog'' and ``F------ A'' which will bow next year at the Public. There's a screenplay she recently wrote for Jodie Foster's company, another for Danny Glover. Then there's the book she's writing for ``Hoopz,'' a Disney musical about the Harlem Globetrotters Harlem Globetrotters African American professional basketball team. The team was organized in 1927 in Chicago by the promoter Abe Saperstein and initially was a competitive team that won a world professional championship in 1940. . Parks is also working on a novel and, earlier this summer, she had to write a commencement speech A commencement speech or commencement address is a speech given to graduating students, generally at a university, although the term is also used for secondary education institutions. for her alma mater, Mount Holyoke College Mount Holyoke College (hōl`yōk), at South Hadley, Mass.; for women; chartered 1836, opened 1837 as Mount Holyoke Female Seminary under Mary Lyon, rechartered as Mount Holyoke College 1893. There is a noteworthy art museum on campus. in South Hadley, Mass., where she received an honorary degree. Although her works have had rare productions in Los Angeles, Parks would seem to be on the cusp of a breakthrough. Named by The New York Times as ``the year's most promising playwright'' in 1989, she is a two-time Obie Award winner, a Pulitzer Prize finalist (for ``In the Blood'') and a two-time playwriting fellow for the National Endowment for the Arts National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Independent agency of the U.S. government that supports the creation, dissemination, and performance of the arts. It was created by the U.S. . Her first screenplay, for the 1996 movie ``Girl 6,'' was directed by Spike Lee. The Public's Wolfe calls Parks ``one of the leading dramatists of the English-speaking world.'' ``The language, the humanity the theatricality of her vision is astoundingly rare and unique,'' says Wolfe, himself a playwright and the author of ``The Colored Museum'' and ``Bring in 'Da Noise Bring in 'Da Funk.'' Does a woman who clearly was born to write, write and write some more even have time to step into a classroom? Absolutely, claims Parks, who says her students have been her first priorities this year, even when it meant turning in a ``Hoopz'' draft late or skipping a production of ``In the Blood'' last May at the prestigious Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. ``Topdog/Underdog'' ended up being a summer production in part because the threat of an actors strike enabled Wolfe to get Cheadle and Wright early, but also because Parks didn't want to cut out midsemester. ``Contractually, I was allowed to, but I didn't want to leave in my first year because it's just Patty and Matthew and me,'' says Parks. ``Even writing 'Hoopz,' if I were just writing, I would have gotten it done, but every week, I had to stop and read a Shakespeare play, and I'm not a speedy reader. ``Running a program, even when it's a small program, takes a long time. Maybe that's because I'm new at it.'' Not that Parks is griping. She loves the free-form program that CalArts Theater School Dean Susan Solt allowed her to establish in creating the program - funded by a major grant from A.S.K. Theater Projects. As set up by Parks, Deegan and Cachapero have pretty much a private tutorial. During the course of their three years at CalArts, playwriting students will write six plays. Two of the plays go through workshops and receive full productions during the third year. In the second and third years, playwriting students will also take acting, voice and movement, tai chi Tai Chi Definition T'ai chi is a Chinese exercise system that uses slow, smooth body movements to achieve a state of relaxation of both body and mind. and puppetry puppetry Art of creating and manipulating puppets in a theatrical show. Puppets are figures that are moved by human rather than mechanical aid. They may be controlled by one or several puppeteers, who are screened from the spectators. classes. It's the ``broad range of experience'' curriculum, created by Parks and modeled on her own educational upbringing. Parks, who studied with author James Baldwin at Mount Holyoke, could have gone to Yale Drama School, but found her own self-education more rewarding. ``I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. if there's a graduate program like this one,'' she said. ``This reflects what I did with my life on my own time, when I was living in New York and hung out with writers and actors and poets and dancers and singers. This is kind of what I did.'' Her students take a Shakespeare course and have lots of one-on-one time with Parks, who is as likely to meet informally over coffee or at her home as to hold a classroom session. Both Cachapero and Deegan have been encouraged to bring in articles or works of literature that captured their attention. Sometimes, they'll spend class talking about how to overcome writer's block writer's block Psychiatry An occupational neurosis of authors, in whom creative juices are temporarily or permanently inspissated . ``She feels very much like a mentor. That's what they call them at CalArts - mentors or counselors,'' says Deegan, 23, who was born in San Dimas. ``I feel like we're learning from her just by being around her. Then, on other levels, she works us really hard, as a teacher should do.'' ``We teach each other,'' agrees Cachapero, 35, a Bay Area native who studied creative writing at San Francisco State as an undergraduate. ``Part of it is, definitely, to kind of help us shape our own process, and face ourselves as writers. Any approach we bring to the table is accepted. She helps guide us along with the tools that work for her. ``It's been an amazing, amazing year,'' she added. CAPTION(S): 3 photos Photo: (1 -- cover -- color) Veer to the write Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks puts her CalArts students on the road to success (2) Suzan-Lori Parks, center, works with her students, Matthew Deegan and Patty Cachapero, during a class Wednesday morning at CalArts. (3) Don Cheadle, left, and Jeffrey Wright on stage in Parks' play ``Topdog/Underdog'' at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre in New York. Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer |
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