Suzan-Lori Parks wants to tell you a million things
Lecture by playwright with great enthusiasm for people likely to stray from drama topics
Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the country’s most successful playwrights, an excavator of the human condition and a thought leader in conversations about American society. The winner of a Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2002 for her play “Topdog/Underdog,” Parks writes wrenching, personal plays that deal with race, gender and inequality. Her work has, unsurprisingly, seen a resurgence in the Trump era.
This all makes her sound like an extremely smart, more-than-qualified candidate for her Tuesday appearance at the Mitchell Artist Lecture at the University of Houston, which has featured speakers such as Bill T. Jones, Jason Moran and Laurie Anderson. Except, Parks doesn’t act like she’s an “impressive” individual. She talks as if she’s a friendly, upbeat, motivational yoga instructor, albeit one versed in the deep history and art of the United States. As you can see from our recent phone conversation, Parks not only bursts with unpredictable energy and optimism — a quality that often shows up in her plays — she loves to engage, in a deeply human way, with the person she’s talking to.
Q: What do you want to talk about for your lecture?
A: I have a collection of things I love to talk about. It’s helpful to give examples of inspiration, courage, resilience, fun, joy, how important it is to work hard and celebrate yourself when you work hard. That goes across communities, voter demographics.
When I hear lecture, I think lectern, which is that podiumlike thing academics like to hide behind. It’s like hiding behind a tree. Nah! My talk is going to be like a talk. It’s going to be fun. I call it “A Million Suggestions from Suzan-Lori Parks.” I try to get in a million things I have to say, and, if I can clear it with the airline, I bring my guitar and sing a few songs.
Q: So it has elements of self-help, the good kind, I mean, or a TED talk. Something more than a talk from a playwright?
A: We all get to a point in our lives, where, “this is who I am. I have a lot invested in this person.” Yet we keep looking over the ridges of the box going, “Hmmm. I sure would like to try … whatever. To take up ballroom dancing.” Yet we restrict ourselves. Negative things flow from that restriction. I am a human being. When I was a child, my dad was in the service. We moved all around the world where folks had never seen, in the flesh, black people. My parents told me, “You are the ambassador of your race.” I’d walk into a store or playground and people would stare. “There’s one!” It was freaky but also an opportunity to represent.
But now I’ve taken it to a new meaning. I’m an ambassador to the human race. Playwrighting is interesting to people who want to write plays or go to the theater, but being alive, and living your life, is something we’re all doing.
Q: The “talk” is sometimes constrained by this construct. Where a famous, smart person who is very successful at something they do goes to lecture, then afterward a grad student asks this two-minute question to say, “I’m very qualified and smart.” But there are barriers built into that kind of speech.
A: I am an active breaker of
my own boundaries. I’ve been in those situations, I’ve been on stage, and the very, very smart grad student who asks the very, very, very, very impressive question, and I have no idea what the heck they’re talking about. “Oh, my, that’s very interesting, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Q: To be honest, as a journalist, I’m the same. I had this question for you, and it was kind of like, you know, “How do you use the forms of mythmaking and jazz and mythology to interrogate black masculinity in a post-Ferguson, Trump-era blah blah blah.” You know that kind of question?
A: That’s a good question! Yeah!
Q: That’s a good question? That’s not a terrible question?
A: It’s a very respectful question. Which I appreciate. At the same time, I want to know, how are you doing? How are you getting through the day? How are you keeping keeping on? How are you reconciling the American Dream with the American Day to Day? Maybe I have some things to pass on to you to help me keep going. And maybe I could show up, and I’m up here being brave. I believe being courageous is contagious. So here I am being brave, and I’m going to pass along some of that bravery to you, and you’ll pass along some of your bravery to me, and we’re gonna get through today, and we’re going to get through tomorrow, and so on and so on.
Which does not invalidate the brilliance of your question. But as a writer, I’m more of a toiler. I’m not an intellectual writer. Although my work is smart, it’s really smart, yes! But I’m not an above-the-neck writer. I don’t just sit there and think of philosophy. I know the philosophy. I’ve read Shakespeare and DuBois and “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad” and Paul Laurence Dunbar and Ntozake Shange and James and Skip Gates. I’m versed in the blues and the Goldberg variations played by Glenn Gould.
Yeah, OK, yeah, yeah, yeah. But when it comes to doing the work, I gotta go deeper than that. To allow the influences of all those beautiful works to help me craft something that is going to challenge people. And help us get through the day.
We need our intellect, and I use my intellect quite a bit, but also I employ the basic things. We need all of our smarts in play. How do I use all those things? I listen. Listen. Listen! And I love. Who do I love? People. Black people, Indian people, Asian people. I listen to them. That’s how I use all these influences to craft these dramatic narratives.
Q: What part of the body do you write from? Sometimes I feel like writing comes from the fingers because it’s typing, or it comes from the spine, or head, or bones and so on.
A: I don’t just write from the head. I do a lot of yoga. So we talk about chakras. Do you know about chakras? Q: Yeah. A: Yeah! I’m an-all chakra writer. It goes different ways; sometimes it goes from the root chakra and travels up, so it starts from very basic things and ascends. Sometimes it starts from the ajna, the eye chakra, and like lightning grounds itself. It’s like the senses. You have five senses. And then there’s common sense, sense of humor, ESP; those senses are also employed. Non-sense, enjoyment of nonsense. Usually everything I write starts with a joke. A dumb joke. That’s usually how it goes. So all the seriousness that seems to collect my work, it starts with something funny.
If you’ve seen the opening sequence of “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “And up through the ground come a bubblin’ crude.” That’s the indication. Dig there. X marks the spot. That’s where the joke is.