Suzan-Lori Parks

Debbie Melman

Ted audio collective hi i'm debbie melman canva is great for designing visual content for work no matter what industry or department you work in now your next presentation with canva presentations start with a professionally designed template and use it as a springboard for your design it's a serious time saver time to present but can't be there in person enter canva talking presentations record yourself presenting and add your talking head to your slides so your audience can watch your perfected presentation anywhere anytime start designing today at canva dot com designed for work.

Susan Lori Parks

This message. Comes from apple card earn up to three percent daily cashback on every purchase every day then grow it at four point five zero percent annual percentage yield when you open a savings account with apple card visit apple co cardcalculator to see how much you can earn apple card subject of credit approval savings available to apple card owners subject to eligibility savings accounts provided by goldman sachs bank usa member fdic terms apply i felt. Like thomas jefferson had invited me into his house and i listened to him and i listened to sally and then you realize but it's not just history. It'S us.

From the ted audio collective this is design matters with debbie millman for nineteen years debbie millman has been talking with designers and other creative people about what they do how they got to be who they are and what they're thinking about and working on on this episode susan lori parks talks about. Her life and her art writing is. My love language when you find yourself. In one of my plays that's me saying i love you i love you i don't even know you.

It'S likely. We all know something about the foundational american story of sally hemings and thomas jefferson she was his property and she bore six of his children when jefferson died after a thirty year relationship he didn't free her in his will as. Was often common at the time susan. Lori parks has staged some of the most important works of contemporary american theater and as a result she has won nearly every artistic accolade including a pulitzer prize several tony awards and a macarthur genius grant her latest play is a play within a play titled sally and tom in it she presents the story of sally hemings and thomas jefferson and explores the complications and contradictions of their relationship with candor pathos and a group. Of phenomenal actors sally and tom is.

Currently on stage at the public theater in new york city susan lorre is also a novelist and a member of the band sula and the joyful noise susan lori parks welcome to design matters. Thanks for having me here debbie this. Is fun thank you susan lori i know that in addition to all you do artistically i understand you're also an advanced brown belt in karate oh that's. So kind of you to mention debbie yes i would say i was an advanced brown belt in karate it's the. Tradition of saito karate traditional japanese karate.

Susan Lori Parks

And that was a long time ago. Nineteen ninety six is when i was. Among with all the other students invited. To take our black belt test and i woke up the next day and said hmm i need to be doing. Yoga and so i happily left the.

Dojo a lot of good friends there and started my yoga practice that i've had since then so i don't know if i'm actually a brown belt advanced brown belt anymore i think i'm just a leather belt or a tweed belt. Hemp that's what i'm a hemp yeah i'm a hemp belt there you go. You were born in fort knox kentucky down the road from abraham lincoln's birthplace yes your father was a colonel in the united states army and you spent your early childhood in odessa texas while your dad served a tour in korea and two in vietnam how did your family manage while he was away so. Much well yeah it's what families do when one of the parents or sometimes both of the parents have to go away and do difficult things i think. Army families or families with one or.

More parents of the service have organizational principles that other families might not understand. My dad yeah my dad served a tour in korea and then two tours. In vietnam i wasn't born when he was in korea obviously but when he went to vietnam it was the summer of sixty eight and we were living in california at the time at fort ord he got the assignment he had to go to vietnam and my parents. Decided that the smartest thing to do. Would be to go to west texas where my mom is from and live there because a black woman with three small children living alone was not the safest thing to do in nineteen sixty eight and so we got in a car and we drove as we often did to the next place we were going to live and so we drove down to odessa texas and rented a house down the street from my mom's mom and dad and family and had an amazing time loved being in texas while dad was away in war and it was very intense and i know my mom now speaks of how worried she was all the time but she didn't share that with us little small.

Little children your dad was also an avid fan of opera and when he came home i understand he would walk around the house lip syncing to puccini and wagner did that instill in you an earlier appreciation of opera still to. Me an early appreciation of the bizarre you know my dad was six four darker shade of soul handsome charismatic very. Deep thinker one of his favorite books was the inner game of tennis if anybody's read that it's a brilliant book about how to utilize the capacities of your mind but yeah and for fun. Yeah he would play tennis and he. Would turn on the real to reel back in the day that's what a lot of music was on turn on.

Susan Lori Parks

The reel to reel and have his. Wagner or puccini blaring throughout the house and he would walk around lip syncing and it was absolutely fantastic it was very bizarre and beautiful i mean i say i tell people that my dad wanted to live large in a world that didn't want him to live at all and that was very moving to me to watch you know a guy who grew up very very impoverished only join the army because he wanted to go to college there was no money for him to go to college and the rotc was the only way he could go to college and then of course you know the conflict in korea and the conflict and all those conflicts that turned into wars happened and he was kind of swept up in that but it was very moving and very beautiful my mom was a big fan of jazz you know still is a big fan of jazz all the greats ellington and ella fitzgerald and sarah vaughan and dave brubeck and she would always be trying to teach us how to jitterbug dance i don't think i ever learned actually she still tries to teach me when i go to visit you. Also began writing poems and songs and even created a newspaper with your brother titled the daily daily what made you decide to do that and do you. Still have any i know everything about me wow my gosh you know everything about me no it was a weird what made me decide to do that you know i'm always a guy just still today i mean and you see it in like three hundred sixty five. Days three hundred and sixty five plays or plays for the plague year certainly.

Where i just look out the window. And go what's going on you know. And that's what i did as a fourth grader and we lived in burlington. Vermont my dad returning from vietnam took two years away from the army as was allowed he got his master's degree and we lived in vermont and i would sit up in our attic and look out the window there'd be things. Going on and i thought let me.

Write a newspaper called the daily daily. And did you distribute it to your friends or your family or oh sure. Sure i mean there wasn't you know we didn't have the photocopying capabilities of distributing things back then but sure there. Was a i typed it up you. Know on a little manual typewriter and passed it out you know it's weird.

To hand out copies of the news to people who be like well that's. You'Re talking about me there when i chased my cat across the street you know or when i tried ice skating or when i kissed you know scott. Young at the tennis court you know. Whatever and i would watch all these. Things i was also enamored of the book harriet the spy and harriet she did that she walked around looking for it on my bookshelf where i said there it is louise fitzhugh louise fitzhugh as the writer and harriet the spy would walk around her neighborhood with a.

Susan Lori Parks

Notebook and she'd write down things and. I thought that's kind of cool but i also i loved writing songs i would make up songs to go along with whatever was on the radio it was a hobby a little fun thing. I would do in nineteen seventy four you and your family moved to germany where your father was stationed and you lived in frankfurt gellenhausen oberussel and in hochscht which was a very very old small town and you attended local schools there from sixth to ninth grade and you said that when you were living in germany you and your family were often the only black people that some people had ever seen live and that people would just stare at you how did you manage through that experience.

Yeah we lived in gelnhausen we lived in. Frankfurt we lived in ober ozel we lived in hoechst my parents sent us to german schools because they thought that that would be a wonderful experience and it was we learned german i was fluent in german after about three months you just inhale the language that was. My experience anyway yeah the only black. Person in the room or the only. Black person anybody ever seen it had.

Also happened in vermont i remember going to the state fair the champlain valley fair it was called and we walked into the fair and the fair grounds. It was very lovely and there was. A group of people who went and. There i was with my mom and. My mom is a lighter skin complexion than i am it's hard if you if you're just listening to this but.

Susan Lori Parks

In the community we call it light. Skinned and so ma is light skinned and so they weren't exclaiming about mom but they were exclaiming about me and they proceeded to come up to me and pet me and i stood very. Still yeah i stood very still and you know what do you say.

Similar things happen in germany and more recently. Quite honestly i was in cambodia at. The temple of angkor wat as a tourist with a guide all by myself that i had gone there and there i was looking at a beautiful statue. It was gorgeous ankarwad is so amazing yes standing there like right magical totally. And i'm standing there and looking and then i hear behind me oh same.

Susan Lori Parks

Kind of oh that kind of thing and i was you know kind of alarmed and i turned around to see what the commotion was there was a group there were a group of people. I later uh they later told me through their tour guide that they're people group of people from china they were all pointing vigorously in my direction of. Course i thought they were pointing at. The statue and i moved aside so they could get a better look because. They had their cameras out and they rushed toward me and i kept moving aside realizing all the while that they were running toward me and they mobbed.

Me and i stood very still i'd been through this before you see you stand very still and they pet me and they and oh and they took pictures with me i put a modest smile on my face and flashed a peace sign and then they went on to look at something else how did you keep your composure i embraced the difficult things i work to see the humanity in all of us because it's there what am i going to do get mad at some i mean i don't know they'd never seen one of me before conversely i went to cuba. With a wonderful group i think the macarthur fellows the macarthur fellows that's it thank you macarthur fellows and i walked down the street of cuba in havana everybody men women and children are saying linda linda and i'm like yeah this is where i'm from so you know it's all it's all good you just gotta keep going you know you came. Back to the united states just in time for you to finish high school and despite your love of writing you had a high school teacher that actually told you that you would never be. A writer yeah they didn't tell me i would never be a writer they told me that with my skill set it might not turn out the way. I had hoped just to be clear when i was a student in high school there was a i guess you could say rubric by which one's intelligence or suitability for certain professions was determined if you wanted to be a writer spelling was one of those yardsticks if you will maybe that's the right word i was never a good speller so we draw a circle around that if you can draw a circle around the word spell and then speller and draw a circle around the word speller in.

Susan Lori Parks

Your mind okay so remember that so the teacher she'd give us what do. You call it spelling tests every friday give you the list of words on. Monday give you the test on friday. I would study very really hard because i loved school i was a good student generally every friday i failed the test because i like to make things. Up see so i was like oh that could be that could go like this that spelling of that word you know i could be like that you know so and that would always so i failed to felt spelling test and so in looking at my grades at.

The end of the year and i. Said i wanted to be a writer. She suggested i think with a certain. Amount of care you might be better. Suited to science where my grades were very very high would ace my physics tests for example and i said yeah that's cool spelling so now all these years later there are architectural shapes in my plays called spells and i am a very great speller actually i just had to find my own way to do it so it's cool you know.

Susan Lori Parks

It'S again it's like and the funniest thing i ran into i was doing a lecture man like i don't know where somewhere illinois maybe about fifteen twenty years ago no maybe ten years ago. And a former classmate from that school. Came up to me and his name. Was steve and he said oh my. God slp you mean she told you not to be a that you shouldn't be a writer because you're such a.

Lousy speller and i said yeah bro that's how it went down and he said she told me the same thing. And i said well what did you become he said well he's a doctor. He'S a medical doctor so he's doing. All right too you also started playing guitar in high school as well and fell in love with it did you have thoughts at that point of potentially becoming a musician yeah i had started. Playing piano as a kid and violin as a kid in vermont after dad came back from vietnam they had a little money saved mom and dad and they spent all of it on a baby grand piano that's how much they loved music they wanted music in the home and we took piano lessons and i enjoy piano lessons we all did and i also gravitate to the guitar i was just telling a friend today that there was a show on pbs or something i think it was pete seeger had a show maybe it was.

Susan Lori Parks

Called hootenanny or something maybe i'm just. Making that up but pete seeger had a show and he would invite artists musicians onto his show and i believe he had libba cotton on his show reverend gary davis on his show and he himself of course played the banjo. Brilliantly and i would watch that show. And think oh wow now there's something. To do and again i was always.

Making up little songs to go along with whatever was on the radio but yeah it was in high school before high school i actually think i started playing the guitar and then yeah it. Was at a time before mtv and all the you know the internet and. All that where if you didn't see something yourself it was hard to believe it was actually happening you know you had all these people around the world who'd never seen a living breathing black person before and you had all these people around the world who'd never seen many black people playing the guitar or the banjo and so the assumption was that black people didn't play the guitar. Which i was told by my black. And white friends alike you were told.

That you couldn't do an awful lot of things as you were growing up. I know i know the road is littered with things that i've been told not to do or suggest you know what how about take this path and i really do take the note i was a science major in college to. Start with and then i drifted over. Into the english department because i blame it on virginia woolf yeah i read. That to the lighthouse really changed your life i love that book one of my all time favorites oh my god wasn't it great that first page is one of the most beautiful openings of any book i think oh say something.

Susan Lori Parks

I don't remember the first page tell. Me something i don't remember misses was it misses ramsey said it was going to be fine it's going to be fine and i just love that it's going to be fine yeah i love. How she dies and they put it virginia well puts that in parentheses i. Think that's brilliant just brilliant yeah that's it and will it be fine will. It be fine and i'm knitting socks for the light housekeeper's son and yeah and finally the woman the painter whose name is that i don't remember that.

I don't remember oh i can't remember we'll remember it by the end nobody look it up i love not knowing things and then just having the uncertainty hang in the air it's a game. Oh i hate that oh i love. It i'm just like you know what it's negative capability like keith's talked about you know we don't know it is knowable but we don't know and we're just gonna like not know from lily briscoe there you go there you go thank you it comes it returns i think yeah and i think she's painting. And she finally finishes her painting to. The lighthouse yeah to the lighthouse was my lighthouse how about that so beautiful.

Thank you virginia woolf yeah you started. Writing again and took a class you applied to take a creative workshop taught by james baldwin at hampshire college you got in and got to work with james baldwin alongside fifteen other students every monday afternoon and i believe you were first introduced to james baldwin when your parents gifted you his book the fire next time for valentine's day when you were in the fourth grade that's a really interesting gift from a parent yeah. My parents were people you know again. My dad was in the army my mom was a college professor they'd met in college one could say they were very sort of traditional you know dad being in the army they were also quietly radical to send us to german school no american parents white black or other were doing that zero and then to give me when they when i. Said you know im interested in writing.

I was sitting under the piano writing my novel and they were like okay. Well if youre interested in writing heres a book i read a little bit of it i mean honestly i looked i think i studied the back cover. Of the book more than anything because. I just would look at his face and be like wow here's a writer and then yeah ten years later really ten years eleven years later something like that there i was and he was. At the head of this library table at hampshire college teaching us creative writing ten years that's all it took.

Susan Lori Parks

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You started writing again and i read this really beautiful paragraph about your experience writing the wedding pig and you said i was typing as if people were standing near me talking and i kept thinking if i turn around they'll leave and i just copied down what they were saying it's been that way ever since and i'm wondering since you wrote that and said that is it still that way for you that's lovely. I'Ve forgotten yeah that's exactly what it. Was i was in a door in my dorm room it was around four o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was setting so it was i guess in the fall beautiful mount hollywood college is such a beautiful place and it's. Just great academics too i really enjoyed my time there and so the sun was setting and i was yeah i was writing and you know you i. Don'T know if you've had this experience.

Susan Lori Parks

Debbie where you're writing and you're kind. Of it feels like you are digging the ditch put the spade in the earth and flip it over your shoulder. I call that torture oh well see. And there you go i just call it digging you see i think i have a high i think yeah i realized through just these few minutes talking with you that i have a high. Tolerance for what most people might call.

Difficult so anyway so there i am digging i would call it doing the. Work and then it's as if i'm. Not digging at all it's just being dug. That is a great feeling that. Never happened to me before because again i started as a writer by looking out the window what's happening oh someone's chasing her cat or kissing the boy by the tennis courts that was sort of my way of writing but now.

It'S reporting basically in an interesting kind. Of weird or voyeurism a weird kind of way and now i was being. Visited yeah it did feel like if. I turned around they would leave and it has felt like that before and it's but i think it's stronger now i can actually tune in you know when we're in rehearsal and i need. A new line everything can be swirling around or when i need a new.

Susan Lori Parks

First for a song and the other day the guys we were rehearsing and you know i wrote a song with just like two chords and they're like making fun like they're ha ha i. Mean all the songs we perform in. The band sula and the joyful noise i've written and i just love them and the band is very supportive and the band loves them too but they were joking with me about this one because they like to do things on the changes and there weren't enough chord changes and so they're like so i just went home and just wrote a bridge three more verses whatever i came in like here so yeah it's sometimes. It feels easier to tune in to the channel if you will and i can move my head around with the confidence that they won't leave me that's. Beautiful i call that the zone it sometimes happens when i'm doing research and hours will go by i mean that's one of my favorite parts of doing this show is sort of embodying my guest for the time that i'm working to prepare and it's been really fun with you oh cool your first produce play was the one act show betting on the dust commander and it debuted at the gas station which is a bar on manhattan's lower east side in nineteen eighty seven and the show ran for three nights you used an extension cord for the lights up lights down cues and plugged and unplugged the extension cord yourself do you still have that.

Extension cord i not only have the physical extension cord i have the psychic extension cord because debbie last night sula. And the joyful noise played a fantastic gig at the francis kite club which is kind of kitty corner across the street from where the gas station used to be it's in the same it's in spitting distance wow and i was hanging out there with one of the. Owners kip malone who's a great musician. From tv on the radio and the booker john weiss i said you know my first play in new york was like his spinning distance from here at the gas station he lives across the street from where that was we had. This memory lane and then he said if you want more lights on the.

Susan Lori Parks

Stage where we were performing last night. He brought out a clip light and i was like dude this is so. Amazing so i'm still very connected to. That experience it was cool last night. To be there and sort of starting.

My public musician life for real and having that be one of the first places that we performed as a band. You met george c wolfe after he came to see your play the death of the last black man in the whole entire world aka the negro book of the dead and he told you at the time he was going to run a theater and he was going to do your plays did you believe. Him oh well i believed the first. Part that he was going to run. A theater oh sure because george seawolf is a genius talented kind righteous brother.

Force of nature kind of person so. When he says something i'm going to run a theater i said yeah you sure are and i'm going to do your plays the second part i was like well i don't really you know maybe everybody was telling me that they. Were going to do my plays well. Yeah that was after you won the. Ob yeah for best new american play.

Susan Lori Parks

In nineteen ninety so after that happened. In my experience everybody was saying we're. Going to do your play so i didn't you know i didn't really think. Too much of that part but it. Sure was exciting when he became artistic.

Director of the public theater and actually started doing my plays the america plays. Specifically in nineteen ninety four thirty years ago i sound like those people when they saw me thirty years ago in. The martinson theater where sally and tom is now playing it's a bunch of circles people it's just a bunch of circles good circles good circles spirals yeah. He also produced and directed your play top dog underdog at the ambassador theater is it true that you wrote that play in three days mm hmm it. Is true do you usually write that quickly no not at all but i did for that one no sally and tom took ten years part of the.

In my experience the life of in the arts is to not trip on things that might trip you up so. Oh you write top dog underdog in three days and so many people think it's oh it's amazing the sound again right it took me ten years people think it's amazing what i love about both experiences is i love the work. I love the digging and the being. Dug and how you trade sometimes i'm. Holding the spade sometimes the spirit is holding the spade we're getting the work.

Done it's good top dog underdog went on to win the pulitzer prize in drama which made you the first ever african american playwright to win the award the new york times theater critics have since declared top dog underdog the best american play of the previous quarter century and the best since tony kushner's angels in america in nineteen ninety three and a revival of the show won both the twenty twenty three tony award and the outer critic circle award in two thousand one you received the macarthur genius award susan lorre has winning so many awards impacted the way you write or the way you think about your writing or the expectations of your writing these. Are such good questions the expectation from whom from me yourself yeah oh no you know when you're well you said you were embodying me so i would. Think you'd probably be better at answering the question than i would be what do you think what would you answer when you were embodying me i would. You know if i were embodying you i'd be like no if i were speaking as me i would say everything impacts the feelings that i have about. What i do which is both a.

Good thing and a terrible thing and. Both are true right light is a. Particle and a wave so both are. True and yet my relationship to the. Awards are right sized i have i.

Susan Lori Parks

Win awards that i have done the. Work for and they feel it feels. Right you know we you know top. Dog won the pulitzer it felt right damn good play you know okay it. Wasn'T a shoddy piece of work and.

It lasts you know through you know my lifetime the praise for sally and. Tom you know yeah it's a good. One i can feel when it's good i've worked on it very diligently and joyfully joyfully so much love i've put in that play so many good jokes. You know i was actually going to ask you about the humor but congratulations on what i think might be the best new york times review of a play of all time that came out a few days ago i haven't read. It see i haven't read it i haven't read it oh my god when the producers jump up and down then i know it's good and they say it's good oh my god okay oh shoot okay someday i'm gonna read it yeah i have to tell you it's.

Actually it's like orgasmic oh oh yeah okay it really is i think the best review i've ever read of anything it's that good so but in twenty twenty three well first of all why did it take or how did it take ten years to write sally and tom i know well there was just. A lot going on in that i. Mean there's a lot going on for. Me i mean i was being a mom and that takes extra wavelengths but. I just want to go back to.

I haven't read the review yes things. Do impact what i write but not in that kind of like oh if people say i'm good so i'm going to be like worried it's not that. It'S more like i'm very mindful of anything i let in my head or. Life as much as i can be and having a kid whose life is you know being oh tiktok or what have you you know i just i'm just being very mindful about what i let into my my head or life as much as i can be so yeah but there's a lot going on so you know because it's a play about people making a play there are. At least sixteen characters in the play.

And they play different parts yeah so. Yes i'm sorry debbie so there are eight actors i would say who play. More than one role and that's by design and that's i hope in the. Future you know that's how the play. Will be done because some of my.

Susan Lori Parks

Plays with double cast and people think oh it doesn't really you know we'll just do it but it's very very. Very very deliberate and joyful because the character in seventeen ninety gets to experience what the character in twenty twenty four. Gets to experience and vice versa so there was just a lot going on there's a lot going on in that. Play there's a lot of i say freight to move there is a lot of history to process you could say download there's a lot of buffering going. On you have to really process a lot of stuff to get to the.

Song of the play the beautiful song i felt like thomas jefferson had invited me into his house and i listened to him and i listened to sally and then oh there was james also had something to say sally's brother sally's brother james and they all were singing and of course other people in the household were singing and then you realize but it's not just history it's us and we're singing too and all these stories are beautiful and painful and worth embracing and worth considering james baldwin has. This wonderful quote darn let's see if. I can remember it history is trapped. In people no people are trapped in. History and history is trapped in us.

Susan Lori Parks

Sorry to paraphrase butcher it but something like that so the idea that we. Are trapped in history and history is trapped in us and this double play this play making this play let's play with this let's in a loving way and see what they say when they know that i love them that's very generous i stood still while they pet me on the head because i am doing the work capital w for the highest cause make no mistake writing is i say that you know writing is my love language and guess how much i love you when you find yourself. In one of my plays whether i. Intended to write you in like in plays for the plague year or you just connect with something that's me saying. I love you i love you i don't even know you and i feel.

Like that is my work as an artist to communicate that to people there's. A lot of love in sally and tom so yeah so it took a lot and it took a lot of getting out of the way that's probably what it was right there are eight. Characters or actually sixteen characters in multiple time zones all singing this song love letter to america love letter to theater and yeah there's a lot of anger that you have to process there's a lot of shame there's a lot of doubt there's a lot of desire to. Go there's a lot of that you. Have to just process that you have to channel that you have to clean it up or figure it out or sort it buffering when your computer says.

Susan Lori Parks

Buffering or when the little color wheel goes around you know that's your computer saying i'm working on it you know. There'S a lot of that and i think now as it is now that sally and tom is a diagnostic like. If you go to your doctor and you get an annual checkup they run. The tests or you take your car into the servicing center they run the diagnostic and they where so in my experience i've had friends go to see. The play when they say something like but i don't understand why such and.

Such you know why you know kdub. Goes back and says hello to his. Friends after he leaves something like something i said wow that's where you're holding that's where you're clinching why this happens in act one you know that's why you're clinching i know that because i experienced it as well and the very end of the play the gesture that happens between sally and tom it wasn't scripted until i saw it for the. First time in front of an audience and knew that the gesture had to. Change and i had been clenching i had been clenching and instead of clenching my fists in earned and righteous anger i opened my hand and that's sally's gesture in the play and i have a spiritual understanding that forgiveness is necessary for freedom to happen no one said it would be easy but that's part of the work so when sally opens her hand toward the end of the play that's that was it wasn't happening.

Susan Lori Parks

In the first couple of performances definitely because i didn't want it to happen. Yeah i mean i think that the being in the audience i struggled with whether or not she should feel love optimism forgiveness for thomas jefferson there's so many contradictions and conflicts that you're sort of trying to process at the same time in addition to there being so much humor that you wanna laugh but then you're not sure if you should laugh and i mean i know that that's intentional but there were times when i wanted to say to the person sitting next to me this isn't funny but it was but it was for a different reason yeah right right yeah. We bring different experiences to the theater. Which makes it such a necessary art form there are you know so many. Things about theater make it absolutely necessary.

To the continued positive progressive motion of our culture but and just to be very clear sally and tom does not make light of slavery no does not. We are not laughing at enslaved people we are also not laughing or making. A buffoon out of thomas jefferson light is a particle and a wave sally. Says to thomas jefferson liar coward i. Hate you she also says did i.

Susan Lori Parks

Love him did i hate him it was both and we have to learn. Or continue to exercise the muscle of entertaining a multitude of possibilities that's our human superpower not even human that's our universal superpower it extends to beautiful creatures like puppy dogs and tables and chairs. Where you can just expand your mind like scout says expand your mind so. It'S seeing the entirety and the beauty of the entirety you see both sides you see all sides it's not just. A play about race relations a lot of people and i think that's why people are moved by it because there's.

A korean american character in the play who speaks to her experience of her. Experience there are two guys who fall. In love in the play and so. It'S not just about heteronormative love you. Know it's us it's all of us it works to be all of us as much as it can be susan.

Lurie there's a bit of dialogue or actually a monologue at the end of act one the character of thomas jefferson speaks to the audience and i'm wondering if it'd be okay to read some of that if i could read some. Of that i don't know what you're going to what is it that you're. Going to read i'm thomas jefferson and i owned people i owned them contemplate for a moment if you will the depth of what that means unquote he tells us that at monticello there were more than six hundred enslaved people and that on his deathbed he didn't free them he tells us about sally quote i was in my forties when i met her she was just fourteen hate on me go ahead i'm thomas jefferson my face is on mount rushmore i am the man love me hate me go ahead i stand at the intersection of the horrible and the splendid and the dizzy making contradiction that is all. Of us yeah that's thomas jefferson he's. Standing there telling us some of the.

Susan Lori Parks

Things that he did that we might. Have issue with he's very kind of upfront about it and he knows that some people will still honor him and no minds will change and that's okay but i think it is important for him as a character because all the characters in the play are on a continuum of freedom i mean they're all moving toward freedom and to get to freedom you have to pass through forgiveness and what mike says in act two forgive me forgive me he's speaking for himself and for his character yeah the. Content of his character who is thomas. Jefferson yeah mike disappoints me in the show i was surprised at how much he disappointed me i wanted him to be a better person i wanted him. So badly yes yes yes yes yeah and in that i think you give him the chance that he needs one.

Of the centerpiece conflicts in the show is whether or not to cut a monologue performed by james hemings which was sally's brother and the company's financier wants loose the playwright and also the the actress also plays sally to eliminate it because he thinks it's too woke he also wants sally and tom to have a more optimistic ending do you think that that ever could be possible oh. You mean the ending that they have in the beginning of the play of. Sally and tom they discard so i think optimism is necessary but optimism you. Know they say mike and luce in. Their first scene together when luz says this is not a love story and mike says it's more like a truth and reconciliation story she says exactly and i think truth and reconciliation the possibility of forgiveness and the possibility to look at your history and wrestle with it as a way to go forward is a superpower and i think we can use more of it these days given.

The sold out run at the public theater given the remarkable reviews do you and the producers have plans to bring. It to broadway oh since opening i've. Been so focused on my band but i haven't had conversations about taking it to broadway not that the conversations are. Not happening it took ten years to write i poured so much love and intellectual skeletor or whatever you call it. Muscles i put so much love into that play i'm so pleased that the transmission is happening which is really an.

Artist'S delight i'm very grateful i want. To talk to you about your band sula and the joyful noise i believe your husband is also in the band you've been playing tell us a little bit more about how you started the band and more about the kind of. Music you play yeah you could call. It neo soul or rock and soul. Music and you write all the music.

I write all the words and music i write all the songs we have yeah we have drums and bass and the vibraphones vibraphone player vibes and synth he plays and then trumpet and then horns and lead guitar this is a great group of musicians i will release the music as i feel like it's time i'm not in a hurry i just like playing it live there's some great tunes and i'm very proud of. Them my last question when is your next novel going to be coming out. I know soon soon yeah random house yep it's in the works i'm working. On it wonderful thank you so much. Susan lori parks thank you for making so much work that matters and thank you for joining me today on design.

Matters thank you debbie susan lori park's. Play sally and tom is currently playing at the public theater in new york city you can read lots more about susan lorre parks and sula and the joyful noise at susanlauriparks dot com and that's susan with a z not an s sort of like liza this is the nineteenth year we've been podcasting design matters and i'd like to thank you for listening and remember we can talk about making a difference we can make a difference or we can do both i'm debbie melman and i look forward. To talking with you again soon design. Matters is produced for the ted audio collective by curtis fox productions the interviews are usually recorded at the masters in branding program at the school of visual arts in new york city the first and longest running branding program in the world the editor in chief of design matters media is emily weiland.

Matters is produced for the ted audio collective by curtis fox productions the interviews are usually recorded at the masters in branding program at the school of visual arts in new york city the first and longest running branding program in the world the editor in chief of design matters media is emily weiland.

Debbie Melman

Suzan-Lori Parks

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Episode Summary

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Episode Chapters

1. Introduction to Suzan-Lori Parks

2. "Sally and Tom" Play Analysis

3. Artistic Philosophy and Inspirations

4. Challenges and Triumphs

Actionable Advice

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