

Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3
Suzan-lori Parks


Awards & Recognition
Finalist: 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama Winner! 2015 Edward M. Kennedy Prize for a theatrical work inspired by American history Winner! 2015 Obie Award for Playwriting Nominee: 2015 Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Play Suzan-Lori Parks is the recipient of the 1992 Whiting Award for Drama
What readers are saying
Readers love 'Father Comes Home From The Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3)' for its profound themes and masterful writing by Suzan-Lori Parks. Many appreciate the play's exploration of freedom, fidelity, and its connections to historical and literary contexts, particularly the Odyssey. The engaging characters and emotional depth resonate well with audiences, making it a standout modern classic.
Finalist, 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
"The finest work yet from this gifted writer."
The New York Times
Offered his freedom if he joins his master in the ranks of the Confederacy, Hero, a slave, must choose whether to leave the woman and people he loves for what may be another empty promise.
As his decision brings him face to face with a nation at war with itself, the ones Hero left behind debate whether to escape or wait for his return, only to discover that for Hero, freedom may have come at a great spiritual cost.
A devastatingly beautiful dramatic work, Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, & 3) is the opening trilogy of a projected nine-play cycle that will ultimately take us into the present.
Suzan-Lori Parks became the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Topdog/Underdog in 2002.
Her other plays include The Book of Grace
, In the Blood
, Venus
, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World
, Fucking A
, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom and The America Play
.
In 2007 her 365 Days/365 Plays was produced at more than seven hundred theaters worldwide.
Parks is a MacArthur Fellow and the Master Writer Chair at the Public Theater.
"Extraordinary! The best new play I've seen all year. By turns philosophical and playful, lyrical and earthy, Suzan Lori-Parks's new play swoops, leaps, dives and soars across three endlessly stimulating hours, reimagining a turbulent turning point in American history through a cockeyed contemporary lens. The finest work yet from this gifted writer... The wonder of Ms. Parks’s achievement is how smoothly she blends the high and the low, the serious and the humorous, the melodramatic and the grittily realistic. At once an epic poem, a moving personal drama about one man’s soul struggle, and a seriocomic mediation on liberty, loyalty and identity."
— The New York Times
"Thrilling! A masterpiece. Heartbreakingly individual, in just the way that history itself is... Suzan-Lori Parks exquisitely twists the plot. She makes us feel as if we are seeing the dreadful dilemmas not just of slavery but of emancipation for the first time."
— New York Magazine
"Grade A... Stunning. That rare work of art that bears the heavy burden of its subject matter, but carries it lightly... Suzan-Lori Parks brings the full force of her dramatic power. She elevates her themes with echoes of classic literature while at the same time doubling down on comedy."
— Entertainment Weekly
"Brilliant, beautiful & stunning... This haunting work is funny and tragic, whimsical and lacerating, poetic and poignant, navigating its radical tonal shifts with fluidity and grace. It plugs historical experience directly into the socket of contemporary life."
— The Hollywood Reporter
| Character |
|---|
PART ONE The CHORUS of Less Than Desirable Slaves: |
LEADER |
SECOND |
THIRD |
FOURTH |
THE OLDEST OLD MAN |
HERO |
PENNY |
HOMER |
PART TWO |
A COLONEL in the Rebel Army |
SMITH a captive Union Soldier |
HERO the Colonel’s Slave |
PART THREE |
THE RUNAWAY SLAVES |
HOMER |
PENNY |
ODYSSEY DOG |
ULYSSES |
Father Comes Home from the Wars Trailer
Father Comes Home From The Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) is a American historical play written by Suzan-lori Parks and published by Theatre Communications (2015).
Digital editions available on Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Google Play (eISBN 9781559368179).
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