An Interview with Suzan-Lori Parks at Cal Arts

Lisa Colletta

The focus of this interview is finding out how you balance your life as a playwright and now a teacher. I was reading an interview with you in American Theatre and they had just published one of your plays, In the Blood. The writer describes you as eclectic, the youthful voice of the American theatre. And, basically, I wondered how you saw your role as a playwright complementing your role as a mentor and teacher?

Suzan-Lori Parks

I’ve been writing plays since 1983. No, 1982. While I did not go to a MFA program like the one I am heading here, I learned a lot along the way from the school of hard knocks, by just being out there and writing. I know I did a lot of things that were helpful, some of them weren’t, but I guess I can pull from my career things that can help a student. For example, having them do movement and dance or having them do voice. In other programs they don’t have to, as far as I know. I may be wrong. Other programs may change overnight. But as far as I know in talking with other students and having taught at Yale School of Drama among other places, students are not given this kind of training.

LC

It seems like the program here at CalArts is uniquely positioned in its disciplinary interest.

SLP

Yes. In their first year, students take a set group of classes. I tell them that there are no electives. But we did squeeze in one elective. We have two writers. Next year there will be two more and the next year there will be two more for a total of six at any one time in the three-year program. It’s a very rigorous set schedule. As one of them said today, they looked at the schedule and listened to me talk about the importance of putting the writing first. “There are so many cool teachers. There are so many cool things to take.” But it’s important to focus on the writing for these three years, so when they come out they will have a certain number of scripts, a certain number of productions, a certain number of ideas for new plays. One of them said today, after looking at the schedule, “Oh, we’re on a path,” and I said “This is a path. This is not just a playwriting course.” I really want to teach them discipline, the ability to stick with something when it’s hard. If I can teach them that then they can go out into the world and be artists. Even if they choose to get into any kind of art, or maybe not even do art, or whatever they do in their life, I want to encourage them to learn how to stick with something when the going gets rough (which I think is the core of being an artist actually). I think all great artists can do that because it’s usually not easy. Even when people are “Hooray, hooray, bravo your play!” or your beautiful painting or whatever, you still might go home to your desk, or to your studio or whatever, and find all your artistic wheels stuck in the mud and you have to really learn how to hunker down and stick with this project, writing, or whatever.

LC

There was a roundtable published in the LA Times two weeks ago where you commented on political theatre. You were talking about the idea of craft and that you’re not interested in theatre that makes the play fit into an idea.

SLP

I believe in the mind behind the mind. It might sound airy, flaky, fuzzy, but it’s actually just basic. We have our conscious brain, all this frontal brain activity. And then there’s the mind in the back. If you want to bisect it mathematically, the mind is back here [points to the back of her head], which is the more primitive mind. And I believe in the mind behind the mind. I believe that this mind, the front mind, the conscious mind, the mind that we use for driving and balancing our check book and all that, is more limited when it comes to creating art. I really believe in the power of the mind behind the mind, the other mind, the subconscious, unconscious mind. To access it you can’t just have an idea: “I’m going to write a play that says x, y, and z,” and so you write your play and gosh darn if it doesn’t just say x, y, z and nothing else. I was talking to Chris Barreca, who is the head of design, about that. Often when a playwright approaches writing a play in that way, the play is limited. It just says x, y, z; it may say x, y, z very well, but it says nothing else. What if a playwright approaches a play in a different way. I was interacting one day with Mary Lou Rosato, an acting teacher, and she made a beautiful gesture. I said, “Maybe there’s a play in it.” If you start from there with just a gut feeling of a gesture, that’s very deep. That’s where my plays come from.

LC

Unfortunately, they didn’t pursue that train of thought in the LA Times article. What did you mean when you said that your plays are more organic? They grow out of something?

SLP

They grow out of something very deep and are initially completely mysterious: For example, why was I really fascinated, obsessed by Lincoln? Someone could say, “Oh, slavery,” but it’s more interesting than just a piece of American history or African American history. It’s something else. A combination of his height, the log cabin aspect, the fact that I was born in Kentucky, his costume, the fact that John Wilkes Booth was born on my birthday. All these amazing things. I didn’t know anything about him when I started. I didn’t know until last year when my fiancé told me, “You’re born on John Wilkes Booth’s birthday.” And I just started laughing. But what was very uncanny was that there were two dates given for his birth. It was either May 10, which is my birth date, or August 26, which is my sister’s birth date. It’s that kind of stuff. It’s not that I want to say something about slavery (certainly it was bad: it sucked, but it got us here) or that I want to say something about Lincoln. So it comes from those weird, deep places, deep inside the root of your spine or the back of your head. They call this part of your head the mouth of God. So organic. I can’t judge and say that my play is more organic than hers. I know I get a lot of mileage by allowing the mystery to exist for a long period of time and being okay about being lost.

LC

How do you create that type of learning situation with your CalArts students?

SLP

Susan Solt wanted me to come here. Susan, Fran, and Steven Lavine, the president, they all wanted me to come to CalArts. Second of all, I chose my students, Patty Ketcherperil and Matthew Deegan, who both did undergrad theater stuff and have been doing theater outside of school for a little while. They’re both very respectful of the process of the art form and very much interested in learning from me and from the institute. They’re brave and intelligent. I planned to create an environment of support so they know that I am interested in what they do. I think they’re wonderful writers already. I want them to tell me what the future of theater is, since it’s in them and other people like them. I like them to tell me something about theater. I want them to write the plays that they are going to write, I don’t want them to write like me. It’s more like a support system. It’s providing a supportive, loving environment with an iron rod of discipline. And they seem to be into it. In our playwriting classes I wanted to teach some yoga, but I’m not certified yet to do it to the whole institute. Still, I can teach it to them. I was going to do Suranga Yoga, which is like power yoga, but it’s not power yoga: it’s Suranga yoga. We are going to start practicing together.

LC

This idea works out nicely with your views on gestures, the mind–body connection.

SLP

The students are also taking voice with Fran Bennett. So they’ll be working on their actual physical voice as well as their writer voice at the same time. The two are totally connected. They’ll be doing movement, which is going to be great. They’re going to be doing acting with Marissa Chibas, which is fab, together with the MFA acting students. And they’ll be doing writing with me [as well as] the Shakespeare read-through with me and a host of invited teachers. There’s also the hand drumming course, the one elective which they are really looking forward to. I think that’s pretty much it.

LC

Which play is opening this spring at the Public Theatre?

SLP

Topdog/Underdog.

LC

And who is going to be directing it?

SLP

Charles Dutton, which is really exciting. We’re in the process of casting now. We have all these people interested in doing it, but there are always conflicts, and scheduling, and blah blah blah.

LC

What other productions are in the works?

SLP

I have several productions of In the Blood going up around the country. They’re doing it at the Guthrie, at Woolly Mammoth, and Perseverance Theatre in Alaska. Those are the three that I’m in contact about. I think a couple of other places are doing it as well.

LC

One of them is in San Francisco, isn’t it?

SLP

Maybe. I usually don’t keep up with other productions of plays, but those three I know because I talked to directors about staging, etc.

LC

That’s an amazing play. It exemplifies what you were saying earlier about Lincoln. There’s obviously the political statement but there’s also something deeply human, just so touching about that connection with American history through Hawthorne. Would you comment on In the Blood in connection with the ideas about creativity that you have been discussing?

SLP

I didn’t set out to write a play about a homeless woman, or issues of homelessness. Writing that play was so difficult, mysterious, and weird because it came out of another play. All of a sudden that play jumped out, and then there were two plays. For a while I thought I’d throw that one away and I’d just write that one and then I wrote In the Blood. The two plays are completely different but both very disturbing. Next fall I’m going to direct Fucking A here. We premiered in Houston and were going to do it in New York but we’re doing Topdog first. So I’m going to do Topdog out there in March and Fucking A here later.

LC

So you’re going to direct it?

SLP

Yes, I’m going to direct it unless we find some incredible director that I just have to work with.

LC

You said Fucking A premiered in Houston?

SLP

Yes, it had its world premiere there. It’s going to be done at the Public too. Fucking A has a cast of 11 and is set in a totally different time period from In the Blood. And in Fucking A, Hester with the A is an abortionist.

LC

To end on an Institute note, what about the A.S.K. Project? Being sponsored by A.S.K. [a philanthropic foundation supporting the performing arts], Richard Foreman will come here which is going to be very exciting. Was there anything you wanted to say about this new kind of theater and what role it might play in the future of American contemporary theater?

SLP

I thank Audrey Skirball-Kenis and the Foundation. It’s so forward thinking. I want to turn out hardworking writers. I don’t necessarily want to turn out hardworking form-breaker writers, those who set out with an idea or blurb in mind before they write a play. I never set out to break the form. I actually set out to write as close to the play as possible: It’s already written so I just have to listen. I don’t have a problem with the form; that’s why I’m doing a Shakespeare read-through. I like the form. I think the form is cool. Sometimes it doesn’t always hold what we want and so the form breaks because the stuff we are putting in it is just overwhelming. But I don’t need to turn out any form-breakers and I also don’t need to turn out any writers who write like me. I hope to turn out hardworking, disciplined writers who are respectful of the tradition and who are respectful of their own voices. I also want to teach them how to learn to listen to themselves, to their own thing. Yesterday, after the new students meeting, I had them hold onto their ear lobe. The top part, that is, the part that is hard, the cartilage part. You turn it down, kind of fold it in. And you just talk and your voice totally changes. Just try it, it’s really cool.

LC

It sounds like it’s coming from somebody else. Or somewhere else.

SLP

Exactly. This mike, this huge microphone all of sudden. Like a god mike in a theater when the director talks into the God mike. We did that. I said, “I really want you guys to listen to yourselves first and then learn to listen to your close friends who care about you and who care about your work.” So that’s the kind of, “Oh geez, we might not turn out trailblazers, yah,” or be on the cover of Trail Blazer magazine, approach. Either way, if they are hardworking and respectful of the tradition, of each other, of themselves, they will create theater that is rich and strange (if it’s rich, it’s always strange). But you’ve got to dig deep, and I’ll know when you’re not. I want you to give me the shit, I don’t want you to give me the bullshit. I know the difference, so be ready to dig deep. And so to be given this money from the Audrey Skirball-Kenis Foundation to do that, I think, is a wonderful opportunity.