Award-Winning Alumna Playwright Returns to Direct Her Play

Obie Award-winning playwright and MHC alumna Suzan-Lori Parks is back on campus directing her play Devotees in the Garden of Love. Devotees is being performed April 10-13 in Rooke Theatre. (See calendar section for details.)

>>> Fighting for a woman's hand in marriage is taken literally in Devotees in The Garden of Love.

The play takes place "in a garden on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, where a mother and her daughter watch a war in progress," Parks explains. "The war, instigated by a well-intentioned matchmaking French woman, is being fought for the daughter's hand in marriage. The war drags on and the women wait, giving up all their belongings to the war effort, but never giving up hope that the war will end and the marriage will take place."

Parks says this is the first time she's directed a play at Mount Holyoke since graduating in 1985. She wrote Devotees for the Actors' Theatre in Louisville, but ironically has never seen a finished production of her play.