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Topdog/Underdog is often compared to other plays and novels that explore racial identity because its main characters are two young black men struggling to survive in America. When the play premiered, the theater critic Ben Bentley likened its interest in “the existential traps of being African-American and male in the United States” to Ralph Ellison’s magnum opus, Invisible Man .
- Plot Summary Plot
In the opening scene of Topdog/Underdog, Booth sits in a...
- Summary & Analysis
The fact that Booth suddenly tells the story of coming upon...
- Themes
Masculinity in Topdog/Underdog is often cast as unstable and...
- Quotes
Not behind me yet but I can hear him coming. Coming in with...
- Characters
Topdog/Underdog Characters Next. Lincoln. Lincoln. One of...
- Symbols
Topdog/Underdog Introduction + Context. Plot Summary....
- Scene Two
Booth brags, saying he’s going to look so handsome in his...
- Scene Three
Lincoln awakes in the armchair hours later. Still dressed as...
- Plot Summary Plot
Topdog/Underdog is a play by American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks which premiered in 2001 off-Broadway in New York City. The next year it opened on Broadway, at the Ambassador Theatre, where it played for several months. In 2002, Parks received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Outer Critics Circle Award for the play; it received other ...
In the opening scene of Topdog/Underdog, Booth sits in a squalid apartment and practices playing Three-Card Monte atop a cardboard box propped up by milk crates. He rehearses his banter, imitating phrases he’s heard hustlers use on the street. Interrupting him, his brother Lincoln enters. Lincoln is a former hustler and Three-Card Monte ...
The Play. PDF Cite. Set in a seedy urban studio apartment, Topdog/Underdog explores the relationship between two brothers, Lincoln and Booth, so named as a joke by their father. A former master of ...
Complete summary of Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog. eNotes plot summaries cover all the significant action of Topdog/Underdog. Two brothers, Booth and Lincoln, strive to bring meaning into ...
Holm is a short story and novel author, and a freelance writer. In this essay, Holm looks at how the brothers in this play prey on each other's insecurities in a tailspin toward tragedy. Topdog/Underdog is a play about the tension and the contrast between two brothers. Each brother struggles with his own demons.
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Topdog/Underdog, by Suzan-Lori Parks, premiered Off-Broadway at the Public Theater in 2001 and opened on Broadway the following year. In 2002, the play earned Parks the distinction of becoming the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize. Parks won a MacArthur Genius Grant the same year. Like most of Parks’s plays, such as The ...
