A student of James Baldwin, with whom she credits the launch of her interest in playwriting, Parks is a MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient and has been awarded grants by the National Endowment of the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, and New York State Council on the Arts. In 2007, her project 365 Days/365 Playswas produced in more than 700 theaters worldwide, creating one of the largest grassroots collaborations in theater history. She adapted the book of the classic opera The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, winner of the 2012 Tony Award for Best Musical Revival. Named one of Timemagazine’s “100 Innovators for the Next New Wave,” her plays include The Book of Grace, Father Comes Home from the Wars, Fucking A, In the Blood (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Venus(Obie Award), The America Play, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, and Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (Obie Award for Best New American Play). Her work is the subject of the PBS film The Topdog Diaries. Suzan-Lori Parks won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Topdog/Underdog, becoming the first African-American woman to do so. Brandon is an Associate Arts Professor on the faculty of Tisch Grad Acting at NYU a frequent volunteer at the 52 nd Street Project and a proud member of Actor’s Equity Association. America and four seasons of FX’s The Americans as Agent Dennis Aderholt. On screen he has appeared in The Good Wife, For Life, Evil, The Big C, Public Morals, Mainifest, The Get Down, The Accidental Wolf, Blue Bloods, The Quad, the FX miniseries Mrs. Off-Broadway, he has appeared in The Piano Lesson, for which he won Obie, Theatre World and AUDELCO awards The First Breeze of Summer and Day of Absence at Signature Theatre Detroit ’67 at the Public Theater and Classical Theatre of Harlem Peter and the Starcatcher at New York Theatre Workshop and as ‘Brutus’ in TFANA’s production of Juilius Caesar. in the Tony Award-winning production of All the Way, with Bryan Cranston, as ‘Booster’ the Tony Award-winning revival of August Wilson’s Jitney Clybourne Park Enron and Prelude to a Kiss. He also appeared on Broadway as Martin Luther King, Jr. Brandon most recently appeared on Broadway starring in the Tony Award-winning production of Take Me Out and Skeleton Crew for which he received a Drama Desk nomination.

As an actor, he has been seen in the Two River Theater acclaimed productions of Topdog Underdog, Jitney, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the world premiere of Your Blues Ain’t Sweet Like Mine by Ruben Santiago Hudson and A Raisin in the Sun. W ine in the Wilderness marks his fourth time directing for Two River Theater. Previously, Brandon made his directorial debut with August Wilson’s Seven Guitars and followed that up with King Hedley II and last season’s Radio Golf. Dirden is truly grateful to be returning to Red Bank.

Topdog underdog theatre