Washington University students to present “365 Plays/365 Days” by Suzan-Lori Parks

In 2002, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks began writing one play each day for an entire year.

The resulting cycle, called “365 Plays/365 Days,” is now receiving its premiere as part of a yearlong grassroots festival that has enlisted more than 600 theater companies, arts organizations and universities from across the nation. In St. Louis, 15 students from Washington University’s Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present a week’s worth of the cycle April 2 to 8.

Performances — set in a variety of campus locations — will include Greek Tragedy & Jerry Springer (April 2), First Beginning (April 3), Look (April 4), Stitches (April 5), 6’4″ (April 6), Father comes Home From the Wars (Part 4) (April 7) and Father Comes Home From The Wars (Part 5) (April 8). In addition, students will present daily showings of three works: The 1st Constant (Remember Who You Are), The 2nd Constant (Action in Inaction) and The 3rd Constant (Inaction in Action).

For a complete list of times and locations, visit www.padarts.wustl.edu.

In addition, students will present two formal showing of all 10 plays on Thursday, April 5. Performances begin at 4:20 p.m. in the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building; and at 8 p.m. in the Village House Theater.

The Women’s Building is located on Throop Drive, just east of the intersection with Forest Park Parkway. The Village House Theater is located within The Village dormitory complex, at the intersection of Forest Park Parkway and Big Bend Boulevard. Åll performances are free and open to the public. For more information, call (502) 548-2430.

Parks — a playwright, screenwriter and novelist — is the author of Topdog / Underdog, which won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Other plays include Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, The America Play, Venus, The Death Of The Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World and In The Blood. Her work for film and television includes Girl 6, directed by Spike Lee, and an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God for Oprah Winfrey Presents on ABC.

Parks began writing the “365 Plays/365 Days” cycle on Nov. 13, 2002. The 365 National Festival — which she developed with longtime collaborator Bonnie Metzgar, acting director of graduate playwriting for the Brown University/Trinity Rep Consortium — was launched exactly four years later and continues through Nov. 12, 2007. Participants are divided into 14 local networks, each built around a coordinating theater that serves as a “hub.” Each hub presents one week’s worth of plays before passing the cycle on to the next venue in its network, thus creating a kind of cultural relay race across the country.