The Talented Ms. Parks (Is Trying to Tell Me Something!)

I've known about Suzan Lori-Parks for quite some time. I remember when her play Topdog/Underdog ran on Broadway featuring Mos Def and Jeffrey Wright. I kicked myself for not having gone to see it because I love theater, especially productions written by and about people of color and women. Several years ago (I don't remember the year exactly), an acquaintance of mine gave me a promotional postcard. The postcard listed a discount ticket price for the London production of Topdog/Underdog. Of course I couldn't go, and this was after T/U closed here in New York City.

Fast forward to my work as a middle school English teacher this past year (2006-2007). I gave my students a writing project. The project was for them to research a person who they may consider to be a modern day hero. So they wouldn't procrastinate in their search, I came up with twenty to thirty people who I believed would be great women and men for the students to know about (in the fields of literature, drama, politics, sports, civil rights, music, etc). I didn't choose any of the usual people who the kids already know. I wanted their minds to stretch. The assignmnent was titled the HERO PROJECT and Suzan Lori Parks was one of the notable people on the list. I must admit, I myself had not researched her life extensively. I knew titles of her plays, I knew she wrote a novel, Getting Mother's Body, I knew that she won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and was the first African American woman to do so, but I hadn't fully absorbed the scope of who she is as an artist, or the journey it has taken her to reach these accomplishments. I also hadn't asked myself, "What Can Suzan Lori Parks teach me?" as I had regarding many writer, poets, even actors who I have either viewed their work, met them or purchased their books in hopes of learning more about my craft as an artist.

Fast forward to late September 2007. I'm taking a weekly, evening class, and my teacher says to us, "I have assigned each of you a playwright. I want you to read their works and find out everything you can about their lives." She begins to read the roll of our names and gives us the playwright she wants us to research. "And DuEwa...Suzan Lori Parks. Do you know about her?" my teacher asks. I reply, "Yes, she wrote Topdog/Underdog and she's a novelist." She asks, "Did you go see it? Have you read it?" I reply, rather embarrassed because I call myself an artist and I call myself a writer, and I'm an African American female (aren't we supposed to support each other?) yet I didn't go see Topdog/Underdog (what was I doing? performing at a poetry venue? sleeping? working on my poetry volume? eating a muffin in a cafe? stuck on the subway? talking long distance to my mom? fretting about money? what kept me from seeing that play? DRATS!!!) and yes, I still felt bad about it. But, there is hope. I now had another chance, more like a third chance (after having assigned Parks to a student of mine to do a report, and he did a good job, with my assistance in helping him edit and revise the paper) to delve into the work of Suzan Lori Parks and mean it this time, both for my own artistic good and because my teacher expects us to discuss the playwright in class.

That weekend after receiving the assignment I went on a search, to find a book of Suzan Lori Parks plays, hopefully a compilation and I decided to do some internet research.

My favorite article so far is titled, "THE SHOW-WOMAN: Suzan-Lori Park's idea for the largest theatre collaboration ever" by Hilton Als, get this I found and printed the article out on October 2nd, and it was published on the New Yorker's website in the same month last year, October 20th 2006! The coincidences are erie! What is Suzan Lori Parks trying to tell me? So I read the article, and it's all about Suzan's journey as a budding playwright up to the point when she sits down in a meeting with her friend, Bonnie Metzgar (Associate Artistic Director of Denver's Curious Theatre) and Ben Cameron (then Executive Director of the Theatre Communications Group - publisher of Parks' plays) to explain her idea to have "a yearlong, nationwide staging of a series of very short plays that Parks wrote in the course of a year" which would "launch on November 13th, and will involve nearly seven hundred theatres, in more than thirty cities...". When I read this I was blown away, just the impact of what her plays have had and would continue to have if 365 Days/365 Plays was staged all over the world for 365 days. The article revealed Parks to be a very aggressive, focused, determined artist who sets out on a goal and gets what she wants. I was most impress with reading about how her Mount Holyoke college mentor and teacher, James Baldwin gave her the idea to turn her then short stories into plays since she read them so well, dramatically, during class. How awesome that she had the great James Baldwin as a teacher.

In my research I have learned that in addition to being a playwright and novelist, Parks is also a screenwriter, singer/songwriter, teacher, speaker and practicioner of Ashtanga Yoga.

Parks believes in writing everyday, as a prayer and committment to the craft. She often works on several projects at a time: screenwriting, staging a play, crafting a novel. She resists being labeled, and is aware that she is one of several black women (Lorraine Hansberry, Ntozake Shange, Anna Deveare Smith, and Sarah Jones) who've had plays staged on Broadway. Parks won the MacArthur Foundation "genius" Grant, she is a New Dramatists alumna, and has received numerous other awards and honorary doctorates. She also enjoys inspiring others during her speaking tours. Says Parks, "I get up onstage. I have my stack of books and a glass of water and a microphone. No podium, no distance between me and the audience, and I just talk to people and get all excited and tell a lot of jokes, and sing some songs, and read from my work and remind people how powerful they are and how beautiful they are.” Parks is also married to a blues musician, has several dogs and lives in California.

Parks journey to being an accomplished artist began like so many others. She lived and worked in New York as a temp secretary. She wrote constantly and fearlessly networked with anyone who would help her.

She never stopped believing in herself and people took notice. Her first play "Betting on the Dust Commander" was staged at a bar on the Lower East Side, which had never held a play. Parks' next play "Imperceptible Mutabilities" was staged at BACA Downtown Theatre, when she was just 26 years old. And the rest is history!

In my search for her plays, I visited two Borders bookstores in Manhattan and ended up buying the volume, 365 Days/365 Plays (Theatre Communications Group,November 29, 2006), all short plays and brilliant! Since purchasing 365 Days/354 Plays I've been devouring this book on the train, on the couch in front of the TV, just anywhere and everywhere I can read, when I'm not working. As of last week, we still haven't talked about the playwrights in class, but I'm looking forward to sharing when we do.

Just today I was changing channels on the TV, searching for something interesting to watch, while sitting with some books and my notebook, when I caught the title "Women in Theater" coming on at 12:30pm, on the CUNY TV channel 75. And guess who this segment of "Women in Theater" was about? YUP---YOU GUESSED IT! The Talented Ms. Parks! I was thrilled1 The show was covering the New York City productions of 365 Days/365 Plays. The show featured interviews with the current Director of The Public Theater, Oskar Eustis as well as the directors of New York City based theater companies: MUD/BONE, Classical Theatre of Harlem and Ma-Yi Theater Company.

The short plays are now being staged at The Public Theater. Eustis explained that the point of the stagings is not to make money from 365 Days/365 Plays but to continue to support Suzan Lori Parks and to support the theater artists involved in bringing the works to life. The segment showed clips of performances of 365 Days/365 Plays including "Vase", "Now Gregory Hines is Dead", and "From The Absolutely True Adventures of Afrodite Jackson-Jones." Just watching the segment, I really felt proud of Suzan Lori Parks, the directors and the many actors who are involved with the year-long production. Once again I jumped on the internet to find out if there were 365 Plays being shown in the near future that I could attend. I found a whole schedule on The Public Theater's website - lucky for me!

I wrote all this, for you, to make you aware of the works of Suzan Lori Parks, because she is now one of my artistic Sheroes! But also because I figured out what she, or rather her creative life is trying to tell me, DuEwa.



Here are 10 things I learned from Suzan Lori Parks:

1) You never know when your BIG BREAK will come, so just keep creating, because it may never come and IT'S ABOUT THE ART anyway.
2) You may not be the first to do something, but you can do what you do really well and in your own way.
3) Throw off the labels and any fear(oh I'm a woman, I can't...oh I'm black, I can't...oh this artist/poet/writer/actor/playwright did it this way and they failed-it could happen to me too, BLAH BLAH BLAH).
4) Pretty much leave anyone alone who's not trying to help you (been there, done that already).
5)Do something toward your goal everyday no matter how big or small.
6)Have a practice for yourself that keeps you in shape (and limber) physically and mentally.
7) Be persistent even if you have to hound people about an idea you may have.
8) Marry someone who supports you and all that you do (Parks' husband was the first to cheer her on when she came up with the idea to write one play a day)!
9) Never forget what your mentors did for you, reference them whenever you can.
10) Learn how to be a damned good (whatever you call yourself) AND MEAN IT!