Performances are Saturday September 27 @ 8 p.m.; Sunday September 28 @ 7 p.m.; Friday October 3 @ 8 p.m. and Saturday October 4 @ 8 p.m.
Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks received the Pulitzer Prize in 2002. It is the story of two African American brothers, Lincoln and Booth, trying to get by in a one bedroom flop house. They struggle with a past of being abandoned by their parents, petty crime and broken relationships. Like the 3-Card Monte game they practice, their story is filled with feints, half-truths and misdirection, while they struggle with racism, alcoholism and lack of work.
Named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Innovators for the Next New Wave,” in 2002 Suzan-Lori Parks became the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her Broadway hit Topdog/Underdog. A MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient, she has also been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is recipient of a Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Award, a CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts (Drama) for 1996, a Guggenheim Foundation Grant and is an alumnae of Mount Holyoke College and New Dramatists. (Excerpted from Ms. Parks's website,www.suzanloriparks.com).
Topdog/Underdog is directed by Paige Dunckel, who recently appeared in Ixion's debut production, The Four Disgracers. Featured as Lincoln is Second City alumnus, stand-up comedian and local favorite, Rico Bruce Wade. Joining Mr. Wade on stage is the talented local actor for stage and screen, Sineh Wurie.