Suzan-Lori Parks was the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for theatre. “The author of nine full-length plays, most of which are taught at drama schools across the country, and one of the founders of a wave of multilayered, historically aware, and linguistically complicated theatre, she aims to defeat what she calls ‘the Theatre of Schmaltz’ — ‘the play-as-wrapping-paper-version-of-hot-newspaper-headline.”