Douglas Parker

Who is Douglas Parker?

Douglas M. Parker is a playwright best known for biographical and reality-based plays. His works include BESSIE: The Life and Music of Bessie Smith, a play with music about the rise and fall of the great American blues singer; Life on the Mississippi, a play about the young Samuel Clemens leaving home to learn about steamboat piloting, adapted from Mark Twain's autobiographical book of the same title; Declarations, a one-act play drawn from the letters of John and Abigail Adams from their earliest courtship through the summer of 1776;Thicker Than Water, a drama based on the Andrea Yates murders; and "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed", based on Twain's comic memoir about his brief period as a lieutenant in a Confederate volunteer regiment.

Working as librettist and lyricist, Parker adapted his play Life on the Mississippi into a musical with composer Denver Casado. In October, 2008, Life on the Mississippi was named by the National Alliance for Musical Theatre as one of their Five Shows You Should Know. In January, 2009, Goodspeed Opera House presented the musical as one of three shows in their Festival of New Artists.