The America Play

play by Parks

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July 22, 2026

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The America Play is a 1994 play by American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. The play centers on a man who is obsessed with Abraham Lincoln and the idea of the American Civil War. Parks is known for her poetic and often profound explorations of African American experiences, race, and history in her works. She was the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama for her play Topdog/Underdog.1

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American literature
The Off-Broadway ascendancy
…recognition with her surreal pageant The America Play (1993), an adaptation of The Scarlet Letter called In the Blood (1999), and Topdog/Underdog (2001), a partly symbolic tale of conflict between two brothers (named Lincoln and Booth) that reminded critics of Sam Shepard’s fratricidal True West. She later adapted George and…
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…recognition with her surreal pageant The America Play (1993), an adaptation of The Scarlet Letter called In the Blood (1999), and Topdog/Underdog (2001), a partly symbolic tale of conflict between two brothers (named Lincoln and Booth) that reminded critics of Sam Shepard’s fratricidal True West. She later adapted George and…
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Suzan-Lori Parks
…Whole Entire World (produced 1990); The America Play (produced 1994), about a man obsessed with Abraham Lincoln; In the Blood (produced 1999), which updates Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter; and The Book of Grace (produced 2010), a biblically inflected examination of the familial relations of a racist patriarch. In 2006–07…
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…Whole Entire World (produced 1990); The America Play (produced 1994), about a man obsessed with Abraham Lincoln; In the Blood (produced 1999), which updates Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter; and The Book of Grace (produced 2010), a biblically inflected examination of the familial relations of a racist patriarch. In 2006–07…
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