ABSTRACT
Shawn-Marie Garrett
When you were first starting out, people used to talk a lot about the canon. And in your early essay “Possession,” you refer to the “History of History” and “the History of Literature.” Now that you’ve presumably secured a place in theater history, have your feelings about “History,” about “Literature,” changed?
Suzan-Lori ParksThey’re not talking about the canon anymore? I feel strongly that it’s okay to carve people like Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, in stone because their ideas are still alive. Funny how, at the moment we feel that someone will live forever, we carve them in stone. Stone = eternity, although we should remember they’re not fixed. History and the historical are mutable, right?
I love Shakespeare. And Shakespeare (still living, immortal) loves me back. In 1998 and 1999, when I was writing Topdog/Underdog, In the Blood, and Fucking A, I re-read all of Shakespeare’s plays. A few years later at CalArts I taught a class called Shakespeare Read-through. I wrote down all of the titles of his plays and put them in a hat. Then we passed around the hat and each student picked one. We read all the plays that were chosen in the order in which the students wanted to read them, with the exception of the historical plays. We read those in chronological order— that made it easier to follow the lineages. I didn’t assign any papers. I only asked everybody to read the plays, show up, be ready to talk about them, and read aloud. There were no right or wrong answers, no dumb or smart comments. The students got really excited because they felt they’d been freed from having to regurgitate conventional thought and they felt that Shakespeare was allowed to live again. And I had fun too! Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3—those are my favorites.
SMGWhat do you take from Shakespeare for your own work?
SLPEverything that’s there.
His characters have heart and brains in a very balanced combination. Which means they have soul, and that’s what shines forth.
A lot of playwrights write with brain power, there are a lot of ideas out there, and you feel like you’re being lectured to, at least I do, because I’m not of the camp, not of the tribe, that likes a lecture. When I go to see a play: it’s playtime! (Which can sometimes be some deep serious shit). Then there are other plays that have a lot of heart, a lot of oooooooh, a lot of feeling. The very academic play with a lot of great ideas, or the Hallmark-Movie-of-the-Week play. Those are the extremes. Shakespeare’s plays have soul, with the mind and heart in perfect balance. That’s what I love about his work, and that’s what I seek to emulate. Those are the footsteps that I’m working to follow in.
SMGI’m glad you brought up the question of soul because your plays are, among other things… “spiritual” is perhaps not the right word…
SLPI don’t mind. I’m not offended. Look at my arm (gesturing to three identical Sanskrit tattoos on left arm), possible translations: “Follow God,” “Submit yourself to your Essential Goodness,” or “Go with the Flow.” There was a man at the farmers’ market the other day, a gentleman who was selling—I don’t know if he was a gentleman, he was a lovely man—who was selling green vegetables. And I purchased my snap peas and he looked at me and I thought “Oooo”—you know that moment where, someone is looking at you with great curiosity and all you’re thinking is “woops, I must have made a mistake.” In this case I’m thinking “I didn’t give him the right amount of money.” I have difficulty counting. So I’m looking at him, what does he need? Another dollar? And he’s staring at me with this expression, and he’s darting glances down at my arm, and I’m thinking, I need to give him more money, and he’s looking at me, looking at me, and he says, “Your arm. Îśvara.” He was reading my arm. Awesome! That’s my favorite phrase, îśvara-prañidhânâd vâ, which is from the yoga sutras, chapter 1, sutra 23, or sutra 1-2-3, easy as A-B-C, god bless Michael Jackson.
SMGSpeaking of which… any thoughts?
SLPYeah, MJ passed away about a week ago. I do feel like we let him down. And by letting him down, we let ourselves down. And every time people would laugh at him… they were laughing at that part of themselves— maybe not all of us have it, but that part of us that felt like we were never “in,” and wanted so much to belong, never were accepted. He was brilliant and admired and could never feel the love. And I so wanted him to have a comeback because I believe in… the Resurrection. God bless MJ. So sutra number 1-2-3, easy as A-B-C, îśvara, which means “Go with the Flow,” and I have it on my arm three times, each time larger and larger.
SMGDo you still practice yoga two hours a day?
SLPI practice as much as I can. I’ve been to India twice, I studied Ashtanga yoga with Sri K. Patabi Jois, who we call Guruji; he passed away about a month and a half ago. Recently I’ve switched gears and I’m enjoying Bikram yoga. It’s an experience.
SMGYou were raised Catholic…
SLPMy religion these days… it’s like a buffet. There are so many good things to choose from. I admire the spirits and the gods and the healers and the saints. Ganesh I wear around my neck, and I think Jesus is great, and often misunderstood, just like Michael Jackson, and Mohammed laid down some great things too. And then the modern-day folks like Mother Teresa and Gandhi and Martin Luther King. I think they’re all manifestations of our possibility. And that’s what theater does too. Beautiful imitations of God. We all are. The saints are great imitators of God. Shakespeare is a great imitator of God. Not God the guy with the beard who sits in the clouds, or who’s painted on the Sistine Chapel… I mean God must look at that and say, “Nice! Very nice!” Like you would say to a child who presents you with a drawing and says, “Look Mommy, this is you!” And you say, “Beautiful! Good job! We’re gonna put it on the fridge!” That’s what I think God says when he looks at the Sistine Chapel: “Beautiful! Good job! We’re gonna put it on the fridge!” I think it’s the same kind of adoring, “How sweet! Doesn’t look a thing like me. But glad that you did good in school.”
The more I do, the more the God-stuff comes out. It’s creepy. It’s unsettling in a way. It’s not hard to talk about, but it’s hard to live it. The more I work, the more it goes in that direction. Almost as if—hmm, as if I’m doing the art so that I can be given an opportunity to talk with people about the Spirit—instead of the other way around… With each work it’s more and more. My new play, we go into rehearsal in January 2010—it’s called The Book of Grace.
I try… there’s part of me that’s trying very hard to fit in. You know, just trying to write a normal play. But the more I listen, the more I hear, and then I go and get this “Follow God” this “Go with the Flow” tattooed on my arm three times, and I can’t help but hear it more. The more I write, the more it’s going in that direction. Writing 365 Days/365 Plays was a devotional act. Or like with The Union of My Confederate Parts: Father Comes Home From the Wars, Part 1—I saw every performance of that play. There was such a “wyrdness”—w-y-r-d—the wyrdness of that play. I would sit onstage and watch it and I’d sometimes be thinking, “Who wrote this?”
What I love about Ganesh is, he’s the transcriber of the Vedas. He’s a writer! And he rides around on a mouse—that’s my kind of god, right there. I’ve always felt this, but as time goes on I feel more and more that I’m transcribing. It’s a powerful feeling, and yet, as Emerson writes, “I am a god in Nature / I am a weed by the wall.”
SMGDo you still write every day?
SLPSometimes “Follow God” isn’t about writing every day. That’s the thing about God, you have to listen. You can’t make up your mind. God doesn’t work so great if you set your idea of God in stone. God is mutable, change, right? And completely constant too—at the same time. So I work to roll with that. Several years ago, I could say, “‘Follow God,’ that means writing every day,” but now I know that Follow God means Follow God. Sometimes I can’t write every day. Over the years, it’s become more difficult. It’s getting wyrder and wyrder and wyrder and wyrder. People who climb Mount Everest get up there and need oxygen tanks and get dizzy—people who dive deep get the bends—it’s like that. I’m walking a path where, sometimes you have to slow your steps, measure your breathing. “Writing every day” for me sometimes means “embracing the scary unknown and having compassion.” I played guitar so much in this show [The Union of My Confederate Parts: Father Comes Home From the Wars, Part 1]; so some days writing would just be about that, or just reading a little. Or sleeping late, or reading about Michael Jackson—maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do today. Maybe that’s what the day was about: doing a good show; remembering the words to the songs and the chords too. Writing used to mean just “writing” but now maybe writing can include RIGHTING. Get right. Be right. Right. Write. Write on. Right on. These days I’m a little more flexible. That’s the thing about yoga, it makes you flexible.
SMGYou’ve expanded the range of your activities: you’ve appeared in an independent film, you’re slated to direct Fences on Broadway, you have a new play, The Book of Grace, opening at the Public in March of 2010, you wrote a poem for President Obama, “U Being U.”
SLPIt made me very happy to write that. To give him a gift of love when he was just starting out. NPR put it on the radio. We need to remember that “yes we can” is a daily promise. We all have to live that mantra if it’s going to work.
SMGThe image of the Foundling Father from The America Play almost seems to anticipate…
SLPThat’s what a lot of people are saying.
SMGThe Lincoln connection.
SLPThe Lincoln link. And Obama is a foundling. He knows his parents, but he is orphaned now as our leader. The Foundling Father in The America Play was parentless. And nameless. When I wrote The America Play it was like the guy walked in the room and started talking to me, so I knew he existed. He is present in the universe. And so he manifests himself on stage, and he manifests himself in the White House.
SMGDo you see your work differently, or do you think it will be interpreted differently, in the wake of Obama’s election?
SLPI don’t really think about that. That’s the thing about doing the kind of work I do, writing the way I do, it doesn’t leave room for looking back.
Krishna and Arjuna are riding in the chariot in the Bhagavad Gita, and Arjuna is talking to Krishna like he’s just some guy, and Krishna turns to him and opens his mouth and shows him the entire universe. And Arjuna’s like, “Dude! So that’s who you are!” I’m just staring into the mouth of God. It doesn’t leave any room for thinking about the significance of a play I wrote in 1994… and not that it’s not important but… I’m thinking more about guitar chords.
SMGAre you going to cut an album?
SLPIf I get my courage up. I’ve written six new songs for Father Comes Home from the Wars.
There was a long time when I couldn’t play one of the songs, “Bronze Star,” without crying. That was the trouble I was having at the beginning of rehearsing this show. I really had to play the song a lot to be able to play it in public.
SMGThe title Father Comes Home from the Wars also appears in 365 Days/365 Plays. Any relation?
SLP“Oh I know this girl, her name is Jill, and she lives in Mexico…” “Oh I know a Jill! But she lives in New York.” “Oh I know Jack! He’s married to a Jill.” “But that’s another Jill…” “Oh her.” It’s like that. They’re related in title. They’re related in (operatic tone) “Theme.” Or is it “Subject?”
SMGMight the fourth part of Impercetible Mutabilites be a third cousin? There’s another father who comes home from the wars.
SLPThose are some of the biggest memories I have, of my father coming home from the war.
SMGThere are some plans in the works for you to direct August Wilson’s Fences on Broadway.
SLPYes. The production was delayed because of the economy and because we want to make sure we can do it with the actors we really want to do it with. The producers want to keep the play in the 1950s, in the time it is set, but also really make it resonate with younger audiences today. I shared my ideas with them, and they liked them, and so we started working on it. Then the producers wanted to do it this spring, but I’d already committed to doing my play The Book of Grace. So they reassembled the team.
I enjoy directing. I enjoy being in the rehearsal room from day one. I enjoy being in tech. I enjoy talking to actors. I love creating pictures on stage. I’ve also enjoyed being in Father Comes Home…, although I don’t think I was acting. I was just being. I was just up there being me. And playing the guitar along with the action, working with the actors. That was good scary fun.
SMGFather Comes Home from the Wars, Part 1 was underscored, almost like a melodrama.
SLPLucas Papaelias wrote the underscoring. I threw in some Robert Johnson licks. And it was really fun to play. We might do a cabaret together.
SMGIs there anything about your success, about being a Pulitzer Prize winner for example, which has surprised you?
SLPI have to say, it’s very isolating. Wonderful Lynn Nottage has won the Pulitzer now, which is awesome. For me, for a long time, to be The Only One, I mean, the Only Black Woman winner in drama. To be The First One, the First Black Woman—and to have won it for a play that is so… it’s a right-down-the-middle play. It’s very lean and it does not apologize and it’s just… right between the eyes. The play came down like that (claps) and it really does burn… it’s like lightning, it burns the ground, the Earth, my own… psychological Earth, if you will. It was such a powerful experience. And that’s what I mean about writing like I do now, it happens over and over and over. I have developed the muscles to deal with it, but at the same time, I keep waiting for it to be an easier process, a more gentle birth, but… they always seem to come like that, like “Whoooooaaah! Heeeere’s anooother one!” (squeals in mock-horror). So the writing and the winning for me were isolating, in a way. But that’s just what happens when you walk a path, that’s just what happens.
SMGThen with 365, you opened yourself up in the most generous possible way.
SLPAgain, that was the right thing to do. Why did I choose the most intense gesture, why did the most intense gesture choose me… well thank you is all I can say because I guess that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. Choose the most intense gesture and do it. That was the next thing. People said, “Why not do another Broadway play?” We did 365 Days/365 Plays everywhere but Broadway! We did it everywhere! We did it in Beijing! We did it in Kenya! We did it in South Africa and Berlin and Moscow! We did it in places like Seattle and LA, and Atlanta and Texas and New England and Colorado and Old England. We were spreading the love and we were world-wide with it.
What good can this award, the Pulitzer Prize, do? What is it for? It affords the winner (and by extension, the community) some possibilities. So I wrote a play a day and then gave them away. We had a core production team of 4 people: Bonnie Metzgar, Rebecca Rugg, David Myers and me. We joined hands with awesome theatre artists from all over and we made it together. It wasn’t even a thought, it was just the right thing to do: fling yourself open and say, “Let us play.” To offer people a part. And how is that different from doing a play on Broadway, a play with $70 tickets, a play with Equity contracts? We had a big free for all. Which was the only right thing to do after the Pulitzer, after you climb the tower and hoist the flag and “Yaaaay!” and then you fling yourself into the mosh pit of people and say, “Let us play,” and somehow that was the only right thing to do. And what was the next right thing to do? I come to New York, and I wanna be in Public Lab, which is 2½ weeks rehearsal time, no budget to speak of, a $10 ticket, run for a very limited time, no reviews cause it’s a workshop production, plus I’m in the show playing guitar and singing… And what’s the next right thing to do? I’m not even thinking about that… it’s just “Ahhhh!” It’s a little intense. And it does make it hard to… it makes it wonderful to be around people but it’s also difficult.
SMGMight there eventually be Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2, 3… through 9?
SLPGod willing, yeah, that’s the plan, that’s the plan. There might be more. Who knows now cause now that I’ve seen Part 1 over and over and over, the whole cycle might change. I’m allowing myself to be flexible, which is very important. If my plan for a “9 part cycle” is too limiting, I’ll change it up. If it’s not what it’s supposed to be then I’ll go on and let it go.
Originally it was nine parts. I had it all blocked out; I had drafts of each one, a big draft of Part 9, which was like a 2½-hour play. But now watching it every night it’s changing; it’s actually changing. So who can know?
SMGYou had originally planned to stage Parts 1, 8, and 9 but ended up staging only Part 1, is that right?
SLPYeah. Yeah. We put on Part 9 one night, and I sat there and then I talked to Jo Bonney and Oskar (Eustis) afterwards, and I said we have not had enough time to rehearse Part 9, we have eight hours of rehearsal left, we have to stop, we have to stop. We have to say thank you to the wonderful actors who put in time on Part 9 but… it was too much to try to do in Public Lab. We only had three days of tech. Three days of tech to tech… Part 1 was an hour, Part 8 really is 45 minutes if we were to do it fully because it’s a lot of structured improvs, and I’m performing during the intermission, and it’s a live intermission, and I’m doing a lecture during the intermission, and then there are six songs, and then this big play at the end… But Part 9 isn’t ready so let’s just put it aside for now, let’s just focus on Part 1, it’s only an hour, let’s only do two songs, and scale way back. So it was an hour of really well done theater. Eventually we’ll do the rest. Cause the families come together in the end, the two families that you see in Part 1, there’s a rupture, and we track them through the whole thing, and then they come together in the end.
SMGIn the present?
SLPIn the present-day.
SMGOne family tree is…
SLPPenny and Homer. And then the other family tree is Hero and Alberta. And both family trees produce 2 different men, both named Smith. A Lincoln–Lincoln, Jill–Jill kinda thing. Or the Hester–Hester kinda thing. So both family trees produced a man named Smith. And one is a poet. And one is a critic.
SMGThe George Bernard Shaw-type of critic, or the consumer-reports- thumbs-up-thumbs-down-type?
SLPI don’t know. Right now he’s more of a fan.
SMGThe Greeks seem to be circulating around this play, the Odyssey in particular…
SLPI named the character Penny because I have a friend named Penny who died. Penny Lincoln. Really. Go figure. I named another one Homer because he stays home. You know me, there’s not a lot of front-loaded thought. I don’t think one has to have read any of those great Greek works to understand this story. And even when the characters refer to those old, old stories, they tell you the stories. It’s not like Finnegan’s Wake where you have to be in the know.
SMGThe weight of homecoming was a palpable presence in this performance.
SLPLike I said, it’s from my dad. My dad came home. From the Wars. That’s what it’s about. For me. It starts with that. I’m just talking about something I know, something which I can really only emotionally understand by looking at it through a play, through the framework of the big picture.
Different writers have different methods—all of them valid and good. I don’t get to my plays through thought. “Thought” in the conventional sense. I don’t get to my plays through ideas. I think writing them would be easier if I did. Because ideas and thought, they’re verbal, and I think my plays are preverbal. From my guts.
SMGIn a way, you’ve always been writing songs.
SLPThanks! All my writing is more like songs, cause in a song you’re in the ocean, the ocean of emotion, and you’re moving around, and you’re trying to breathe, and that’s what it feels like, trying to write. That’s what I try to do. I try to sing to people.
SMGAnd when you lay it down on the page…
SLPA play is the road. You’re giving an actor or a director the path. And the way a word is… if you put a word in the middle of the page, that’s very different than if you put it on the side, and if you put a character’s name in a line, that’s very different than if you put it in the middle, with parentheses. Or italics, which can be very vigorous if used sparingly, like saffron. Italics are like surprises. Punctuation marks are jewels. With every letter I hold my breath and think, “Is it this or that? What best communicates the energy that’s gonna course through the language, that’s gonna tell an actor—whose instrument is finely tuned—how to shoot that energy through to the audience night after night, so they can ride that wave of language. It’s very, very, very important to me how it is on the page, how it lies there. How it lies there in its grave. You lay them out right, and they can be continually and beautifully resurrected.
Space. The rhythm of the words. Repetition. How the character is saying what she’s saying. Each choice should indicate a specific emotional thing. Which can vary in color night after night after night as the actor continues making it anew. Is it y-o-u-r or y-r? With y-o-u-r there’s more room. See what it feels like in your mouth, in your tongue, in your body. Allow the language to inform the choices. Read the words, and feel. My plays beg for feeling. They beg for the gut response. Let the stomachbrain, let the heart-brain, inform your head-brain, and not always the other way around. Because then we’re getting to some deep stuff. And it’s frightening. But it’s also healing.
SMGDo you read criticism or scholarship of your work?
SLPI read what I feel will most help my process. Scholarship is important but for me—reading, it doesn’t help me write. Reading scholarship about the works of “Suzan-Lori Parks” would take me outside the work. And I need to keep myself inside it, I need to be deep up in it, not outside intelligently observing, not at arm’s length. Staying deep up in it: that’s the best way for me to write my next thing.
