Suzan-Lori Parks on campus

Award-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks holds a “Watch Me Work” session with her trusty typewriter in the Randall Lobby of the Paramount Center on April 3. Parks has been named the 2013 Waldman Chair. (Photo by Aja Neahring '13)

Prolific and award-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks was honored April 3 as this year’s Emerson Waldman Chair in Theater Arts.

Before participating in a conversation with the community at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, Parks conducted a “Watch Me Work” session in the Randall Lobby of the Paramount Center. The session was a performance piece and meditation on the artistic process. It was also an actual work session in which the audience was welcome to observe and/or work on something of their own.

Parks was happy to chat with students as she used her typewriter to compose work.

Once named Time magazine’s “100 Innovators for the Next New Wave,” Parks was the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Topdog/Underdog, a Broadway hit. She has also written several other screenplays and novels.

The Waldman Chair in Theater Arts is overseen by ArtsEmerson and was established in 2007 by Honey Waldman ’46 and her sister, Gladys Waldman Brownstein.

Suzan-Lori Parks speaks with Ciera-Dawn Washington '15 on April 3. (Photo by Aja Neahring '13)