Topdog/Underdog

About This Event

Suzan-Lori Parks' Pulitzer-winning drama, directed by Kenny Leon — two brothers named Lincoln and Booth, a joke played by their own father that becomes the engine of the entire play, running now at Steppenwolf.

Parks made real history with this one: when Topdog/Underdog won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002, after opening on Broadway that same year, she became the first African-American woman ever to win it. The premise itself is a loaded one by design — two brothers stuck with the names Lincoln and Booth as a bitter family joke, forced to make sense of a lifetime of rivalry and resentment those names practically guaranteed. The play had originally premiered off-Broadway in 2001 before its Broadway run at the Ambassador Theatre, and it's been revived regularly since, including a Tony-winning Broadway production decades later.

Worth knowing: no single showtime is listed since it runs across seven weeks with a normal theater schedule — check steppenwolf.org for the exact date and time you want.