Suzan-Lori Parks heads east

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It looks like the Big Orange is soon to lose another playwright to the Big Apple. Suzan-Lori Parks, the Pulitzer-prizewinning playwright (‘Topdog/Underdog’), has been awarded the first Master Writer Chair at the Public Theater in New York City.

Announced today by Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis and executive director Andrew D. Hamingson, the theater has received a ‘substantial’ three-year grant from the Andrew E. Mellon Foundation to lauch the first Master Writer Chair position. The full-salaried post affords the chosen writer the chance to develop his or her work using the resources of the Public and to participate in ‘the artistic life of the theater.’

Culture Monster learned from a Public Theater spokesman that the multifaceted Parks is traveling to France for a film project, so she could not immediately be reached for comment. The spokesman said he had no information on whether Parks, a resident of Venice and founder of the dramatic writing program at CalArts, would remain involved in Los Angeles projects or had any plans to return to L.A. after her East Coast stint as Master Writer is over.

-- Diane Haithman

File photo of Suzan-Lori Parks by Richard Hartog/Los Angeles Times