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[0:06] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Varieties Theater Podcast, bringing you backstage and behind the scenes with the stars and creators of the hottest shows on Broadway, off Broadway, and beyond.

[0:16] Gordon Cox: I'm your host, Gordon Cox.

[0:19] Gordon Cox: On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to Suzan-Lori Parks and Oskar Eustis. Parks is the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, whose plays include Topdog/Underdog, Venus, The Red Letter Plays, and Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2, and 3. And Eustis is the artistic director at Off-Broadway's Public Theater, where everything from Hair to Hamilton got their start.

[0:43] Gordon Cox: The Public is also where Parks' latest play, White Noise, is now running in a production directed by Eustis. They're both here with me to talk about the play and all the hot buttons it pushes: race, art, slavery, and of course, bowling. Hi, Suzan-Lori and Oskar. Thanks for joining me.

[1:02] Suzan-Lori Parks: Pleasure, Gordon.

[1:02] Oskar Eustis: Thanks for having us.

[1:04] Gordon Cox: I wanted to start by talking about, you know, what is clearly the sort of most urgent issue addressed in the play, and that is, of course, bowling. For people who have not seen the play yet, there's this fairly extraordinary setup where they're taking actual balls and they're bowling them at the audience underneath us, I guess depending on where you're sitting, but where I was sitting, they were underneath us. It apparently works like a bowling, like an actual bowling alley, and there are these little gutters that then carry them back to the performers to use. And does that actually happen? Are these actual working kind of bowling lanes?

[1:46] Oskar Eustis: No, actually, we have a whole group of very small underprivileged children who are called Pinboys who live under the stage.

[1:54] Suzan-Lori Parks: Right, and it's thematically appropriate, I think of that.

[1:57] Oskar Eustis: Exactly. In exchange for free tickets to all the public shows.

[1:58] Suzan-Lori Parks: To all the public shows.

[2:02] Oskar Eustis: Which is not public. Let's be honest.

[2:04] Suzan-Lori Parks: They don't have to stand in line for Shakespeare in the Park.

[2:06] Oskar Eustis: It can just work.

[2:07] Suzan-Lori Parks: No.

[2:08] Oskar Eustis: That's not true.

[2:09] Suzan-Lori Parks: Exactly.

[2:15] Oskar Eustis: But what the bowling is the essential physical activity of the play.

[2:22] Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah.

[2:23] Oskar Eustis: It was from the moment that Suzan started conceiving it. The bowling, of course, the climax of the first act and the second act take place in the bowling alley. And the thing I was sure of when we started working on it, that the actors needed to be bowling straight at the audience. That there was no other relationship that would dramatically make sense. And fortunately, the genius designer Clint Ramos and our brilliant production team with the Public figured out how to make that magic happen.

[2:53] Gordon Cox: Does it ever not work? Like, do the bowling balls always get to the right place?

[2:56] Oskar Eustis: No. Bowling balls sometimes get to the wrong place.

[2:59] Suzan-Lori Parks: They now, in preview, they got to the wrong place with greater frequency.

[3:03] Oskar Eustis: Sure.

[3:04] Suzan-Lori Parks: And more surprising results.

[3:06] Oskar Eustis: Yes. Now that we are through the preview period, it is very rare that a bowling ball ends up in the wrong way. Although once I was backstage a couple, maybe last week.

[3:14] Suzan-Lori Parks: You heard you read about in the report.

[3:16] Oskar Eustis: I was backstage and just right in the little hallway, and a bowling ball came shooting into the hallway, and we were all like, what the fuck?

[3:24] Suzan-Lori Parks: Right.

[3:25] Oskar Eustis: And everybody, Jeremy and the whole team were on there. It's just bad. We should not be revealing our dirty bowling ball on Gordon's podcast. But we watched the replay, and Tommy had actually kicked the ball off the stage.

[3:40] Suzan-Lori Parks: Oh wow.

[3:41] Oskar Eustis: So there was because the scene was so intense at the end that some shit was going down, and Tommy Sadowski kicked the ball off the stage. And that was an intense moment.

[3:54] Gordon Cox: So here's a question. How good of a bowler do the cast members, including Thomas Sadowski and Daveed Diggs, who is a great cast in Zoe Winters and Sharia, help me with their last name for everything?

[4:05] Suzan-Lori Parks: Thank you.

[4:06] Oskar Eustis: Like how good were there bowling rehearsals and how extensive were they?

[4:11] Suzan-Lori Parks: David took bowling lessons.

[4:15] Oskar Eustis: Is that true?

[4:16] Suzan-Lori Parks: Yep.

[4:17] Oskar Eustis: Well, we actually forced David to take bowling lessons.

[4:20] Suzan-Lori Parks: Because he's bad or because the fact is that his character Leo is so good, and we're right.

[4:28] Oskar Eustis: One at some point, yeah, yeah.

[4:30] Suzan-Lori Parks: Okay, that makes sense. And we all went bowling as a cast, which was really exciting. Really fun.

[4:35] Oskar Eustis: And who is the best bowler on the cast?

[4:38] Suzan-Lori Parks: Sharia is the best bowler.

[4:39] Oskar Eustis: Okay, and Jeremy the assistant stage manager.

[4:44] Suzan-Lori Parks: Brilliant. Fucking brilliant.

[4:45] Oskar Eustis: Okay.

[4:46] Suzan-Lori Parks: Oh shit. Sit down.

[4:47] Oskar Eustis: He's so good.

[4:48] Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah, yeah. He's our ringer.

[4:50] Oskar Eustis: Yeah, yeah. But what we soon realized after spending some time with bowling lessons is because nobody in the play actually has to knock pins down, that's not what they're doing. What they're doing is actually throwing the ball. That we realized that the look and confidence with which they threw was way more important than their ability to carry a real bowling ball.

[5:16] Suzan-Lori Parks: So we began to work in a slightly different way. So, all joking aside, bowling, as you alluded to, Oskar, is very important to this play, and it is very—Suzan-Lori, tell us a little bit about kind of where bowling came from and how it kind of opens up what the rest of the play is about.

[5:31] Suzan-Lori Parks: I mean where bowling came from for me.

[5:33] Oskar Eustis: Yeah, exactly.

[5:34] Suzan-Lori Parks: Not why it exists, period.

[5:36] Oskar Eustis: But yeah.

[5:36] Suzan-Lori Parks: I know. Why bowling? I mean, and this, you know, I used to watch my parents bowl. They were—my dad was in the service and we traveled around a lot. And wherever it—when I was growing up, wherever you moved, there was always a bowling alley. And bowling, while there are some in the world, of course, highly skilled bowlers. My experience with bowling is for my parents is that you didn't have to be great to participate. So they would go out in the evenings and meet, you know, be social right when they arrived in town, which was lovely. And they would go bowling and I would watch them take their bowling balls and happily go and join a new group of friends, new friends. And sometimes I would go with them and just sit in the back and just watch them bowl. Because it was cool to watch. I just enjoyed it. It's repetitive, it's—you could say violent without being really violent, because you're basically hurling a ball at some things and trying to knock them down.

[5:38] Oskar Eustis: You know.

[6:41] Suzan-Lori Parks: And so, but then why for you was it an integral part of this play as you were—as it was coming together for you?

[6:48] Suzan-Lori Parks: It's also—it seems—although it's, you know, it's played all over the world, it seems because there is a bowling alley in the—or there was or I've heard I've never actually seen it. Yeah, in the basement, there's a bowling alley in the basement of the White House, maybe right by the fallout shelter. I don't know exactly what it is. But it seems just an integral part of American—literally, it's an integral part of the American subculture.

[7:16] Oskar Eustis: It really is.

[7:17] Suzan-Lori Parks: And I was joking with DeVee the other day, it's part probably part of the Underground Railroad is a bowling route. You know, so it just was in my guts for a long time.

[7:27] Oskar Eustis: Right.

[7:28] Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah. So I just put it in the play. And then as the—the talk a little bit more about the play itself and kind of where it came from and kind of how the idea came to you and when you started to think about it as a play and as these group of characters in this story.

[7:43] Suzan-Lori Parks: Right. It started—I managed to—it by now we've like told the stories I was gonna go over and over to each other. But so I was in the very theater that we're playing in now, the Osbacher Theater at the Public Theater. And in 2014 there was a play, Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2, and 3, that I written, and there was a part—a moment in that play where the lead character, Hero, who is an enslaved person, the play takes place in 1860. And he is imagining the future, what it will be like to walk down the street as a free man, and if he is approached by law enforcement individuals, and he said—and they say, Who do you belong to? And he says, I belong to myself. Will they leave him alone?

Will that be, you know, who owns you? I own myself. Will they leave him be? And his friend, he's asking his friend, and his friend Smith says, you know, I don't know. And so I watched that scene over and over and over, and I thought, I have to write a play about the future, which is now. And it started from there, basically.

[8:46] Suzan-Lori Parks: And that moment of that hands up, don't shoot moment basically happens in this play at the same spot on the stage.

[8:54] Oskar Eustis: Oh yeah.

[8:55] Suzan-Lori Parks: So it's very exciting for me, just being a dweeb like that. And that is for people who haven't seen it, that is sort of the inciting event of the play. It is a thing that happens to Daveed Diggs's character and inspires the action.

[9:08] Gordon Cox: The action of the—did you have a sense of what the broader—where it would go from there? Like did you have a sense of, oh, this play is gonna be this as you started out on it? And if so, how did that change as it developed?

[9:25] Suzan-Lori Parks: I'm looking at Oskar for like, I don't know. This—like I saw I started in this play is gonna be that.

[9:32] Oskar Eustis: No, no, I didn't. I just knew it was gonna be contemporary, it was gonna involve some people, and they were gonna go through some shit.

[9:40] Suzan-Lori Parks: So that's kind of all I knew. And then can we talk about the names now?

[9:45] Oskar Eustis: Yeah, please.

[9:45] Suzan-Lori Parks: And then I started telling myself a dumb joke. And this is what I now know. Probably by working on this play, because every time we work on a new thing, I think we learn about—we can look back at our old works with greater clarity, maybe. I mean, maybe not, but for me it happened this time around where I was telling—we were at Yale, or right? We were at Yale doing something.

[10:15] Oskar Eustis: Doing something.

[10:15] Suzan-Lori Parks: Wynn and Campbell. Sorry, apologies.

[10:18] Oskar Eustis: The wind, yeah, we were there, and you had directed a piece—the monologue from Leo's monologue from the opening of White Noise and the little piece from Topdog/Underdog.

[10:27] Suzan-Lori Parks: Right, and then we were in a cute QA with the audience.

[10:30] Oskar Eustis: That's right, and I just started running my mouth.

[10:32] Suzan-Lori Parks: That's right? You did. It's my favorite thing. The blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like Ralph at one of his club meetings, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I was telling the audience like where the names of the characters came from. And I said, you know, so it's Leo, Dawn, Misha, and Ralph. Those are the names of our four characters. And I said, anybody know the Ninja Turtles? Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Rafael. And right. So it's like a dumb, it's like a dumb joke. It makes you laugh. And so what I realized, oh shit, that's what I do when I write. I tell myself a dumb joke. And once I tell myself a dumb joke, then the floor drops out, and I descend rapidly into a very deep, dark and frightening and difficult place.

[11:25] Suzan-Lori Parks: I didn't know nothing about this place. I didn't know she'd start and started to write a word of it until we were up on Martha's Vineyard working on another play. Oh, which is also going to be a great play, by the way. But when suddenly I just said, you know, I just wrote this first act, you think we could just take the actors from the other show and just hear it? This was the August of 2017. So not that long ago. And I said, of course, yes. And the actors that afternoon read what is not unchanged, but very much the complete first act of White Noise.

[12:06] Oskar Eustis: And we hit the intermission and everybody on the table burst into tears. And the intensity of the emotional reaction was partly because of the content of the play. The play is so powerful, but partly I think it was a kind of aesthetic shock because all of us having spent our life in this profession recognize when you're in the presence of a completely assured voice. And the voice of this play was totally present from the first moment. And it was just you just feel you're in good hands from the moment Leo opens his mouth. And it sounds very different from any of Suzan-Lori's other plays. But it has its how so the um I mean, if we talk in that um much disputed word style. It is a kind of heightened realistic style.

And you can have all of my coffee. Um it's it's a kind of heightened realistic style that is much less um uh uh formally uh ostentatious than most of her other plays. There's there's there's linguistic, this brevity linguistic things within it, but they are essentially subsumed into realistic dialogue. It feels more like a realistic play than anything that Suzan-Lori's written for. And yet it's also totally understandable. I at one point was trying to convince Suzan-Lori to call this Father Comes Home from the Wars part nine. Because to me it is the extension of Father Comes Home. But it's and that that sense, and this is the thing that I see Suzan-Lori do that I know very, very few writers who can do this, is that when they tap into something and drop in, she's inside of it. She's inside of not just what the next sentence is going to be, but what the world and language of this playing character in a way that was just um really fun.

[14:01] Gordon Cox: And so Suzan-Lori, to explain what's that like for you? What did you tap into? What did you find when you dropped into what became this play? What uh and what surprised you about it?

[14:10] Suzan-Lori Parks: I feel like I was dropping into, I mean, it sounds corny, but I feel like I was dropping into the present moment. Yeah. And that's what makes the play so fucking trippy. It's like now. It's now. And it's like now again. Oh, here we are now again. Yeah, yeah. It's right on the now. And it it's uh is ex it's exhilarating for that reason. And I think it it's exhilarating and it's also a work of art, which means it's actually kind of hard to talk about. Right. And we found that in general with audiences, audiences are having very powerful responses. Yeah. They're not finding it easy to talk about their responses because the sort of what I feel about the blind, certainly what the goal of the production was, was to take everybody and pull them into such detail of the experience of the characters that we didn't have a chance to sit back and put people into the categories that we were putting them into, that we actually just are stuck in the point of view of the characters.

Right. And of course, particularly I feel like this play is written for me in the specific sense that it's written for an audience that feels that it's awoke, that feels that on some level we get the history of racism in this country, and we get the problem of black white relationships, and we've struggled with it, and we see it clearly, and the play goes, Oh, you think you see it clearly? No, you don't. It's way deeper than you think. And so it it shakes you up. It shakes me up on a kind of visceral level. It's really.

[15:48] Oskar Eustis: Did it shake you up writing it, Suzan-Lori?

[15:50] Suzan-Lori Parks: Oh, yeah. Oh, let's not. How did you I mean it Yeah, I mean, compared to plays like let's just I mean Father Comes Home from The Wars took a long time. Topdog Underdog took uh to be I mean took no time at all relative to this play. Topdog Underdog was it was like it was just poured into me in a kind of way, you know. This play, I feel like I was, you know, tunneling through solid rock, you know, or going to do a you know you remember those boys in that tie in that cave in Thailand last year or whatever. Remember, I mean Yeah. I feel like I was one of those I was sometimes the boys in the cave and the rescuers. I was going through and you know, through water, through rock, through darkness, through, you know, listening to the voice of these people who needed to be brought to the surface so that they could survive.

Right. Somehow, and that's what it felt like. And it was horrifically difficult. I mean, it was horrible because it was horrible, it was awful. No, because I had to hold in my mind, in my heart, in my guts, the consciousness of four people, four different people who the world has shoved into four opposing corners. And so I felt like actually I was being quartered. And I don't think that's it wasn't comfortable. Yeah. But my husband kept saying, You have to keep going, Christian. He was like, You have to keep writing, you have to keep writing. And I would jump up from my desk and go, I can't do it, I can't do this, I can do this, just sit down, write some more, write some more. I mean, that was really the r the process of writing that.

It was like, oh fuck. And it was about, was it about the topics that were being addressed, like the sort of you know, all the subject finance button issues that you're talking about? And also about the kind of pull of all the different characters, the four characters.

[18:00] Suzan-Lori Parks: The topics, the topics of being addressed, and because they're being addressed by people who have just four different points of view. I had to, and because the way the play works, which I'm I gotta say I'm very proud of, that we the play loves all four characters equally. The play roots for cheers on all four characters equally. So when we we hear Leo's solo or Leo's lines, or we watch Leo's struggle, we're rooting for him. When we see Ralph's struggle, we're understanding him, even though we might not agree with him. We get where he's coming from. I I understand. I get it. I'm vibing with you, Ralph. Every word that comes out of Ralph's mouth, I agree with. It's just Ralph is the character played by Thomas Sadoski for people who are in the yeah, and the the the I mean, Dawn, I get where she's coming from.

Misha, yeah, I'm understanding her. And so it's presenting these subjects in a way that's including all the characters. Nobody in this play, no character in this play gets thrown under the bus. Right. Um, we're all on the bus. We're all right on the bus together, um, sitting wherever we want, and that's really hard to maintain as a writer when you're creating that from nothing. Yeah. Because usually we side with one character against another. Right, you know, but not this play. Which is why I think it's so disturbing, I think. Or so heartbreaking in the heartbreaking wide open, and now I can like talk about things that I couldn't talk about before. Yeah, you know, because I realize it's okay to have these conversations with my friends. Or you know.

[19:34] Oskar Eustis: Right. Right. Yeah. The um the kind of uh as we talked a little bit about the inciting event of the player, or the thing that comes out of the inciting event of the play, it was a thing that went I thought early in its run and didn't know what was gonna happen in this play. Right now, it's it's a little bit out there. It's kind of uh it is a Leo, the character played by D. V. Diggs asks his friend to do something. Um do you think of how do you think of how do you prefer people to come into this play? Is that a do you want it to be a surprise? It's kind of out there because it's been in the reviews and things like that. But yeah, um, how did you think of how do you describe the play to people as they uh yeah as they're coming into it?

[20:16] Oskar Eustis: I actually don't know how to describe the play uh it's a play about bowling, as you said. Um what is certainly true is that there is an innocence that the early audiences have of not knowing that it's a play that's gonna be about slavery in a very real way that is um compelling. But what has been exciting to me is watch that the audience response has not in any way dissipated or been watered down by the fact that a lot of audience members are walking in knowing that information now. People have seen it now two and three times though. I mean, and we're still we're still getting, you know, gasps from the audience, we're still getting people say, you know, fuck no. Right. You know, at certain moments.

And so, you know, like with any good drama, knowing the story isn't screwing up your appreciation of it. We all know what happens in Hamlet, but it doesn't make it a good point. I mean, how do people watch it? We all know how to dance, that ends true every year. They're like, yeah, we're gonna go watch his play, yo. Yeah, and he's gonna spoiler alert. I mean it didn't diminish the right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So hopefully it works like that.

[21:26] Oskar Eustis: Um other thing about the bowling, Gordon. Just because this is this is this is you know gonna help characterize how geeky I am. But for me, the thing that has been with me from the moment I read this is Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone, which for those of you who haven't read it, it's it's uh came out about 20 years ago and is a landmark work of sociology, is an astonishing book, and he uses the decline of bowling leagues as the image for the decline of American civic life. For the way, right? I hadn't even read that book. No, no, no, no. That's what I'm talking about. I gotta keep some of this stuff close to us. But the book is it's it's totally worth rereading. I mean, it's it's he's he's an amazing and and what he his contention is is that the breaking down of sort of the post-war American consensus in civic society can be traced by the decline of bowling leagues, the decline of unions, the decline all of these non-political but civic organizations where people organize themselves as a community.

Right. And to me, n the bowling team that is the four characters in the show, and the the band Clover that is the four characters in the show, that coming apart is a perfect container and holder for what the play is actually about. It's about those relationships falling apart and fragmenting. So little sociology shout out yeah I'm in line with those people that's what I'm talking about but but what I mean is but I appreciate that that some you know people have thought about this because that's what I could feel and not having the scholarly referent uh but I could feel that.

[22:55] Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Suzan-Lori, you are the master writer chair here at the public SLP yeah what is that what is that um what does that mean and how does that how how tell me about your sort of uh gen usual interactions I I feel like I'm a uh uh uh uh no like a prof not uh but emeritus is not right because professors emeritus high retired yeah that means you're right and I'm not a retiring I'm not the retiring type um I'm the hard working type you know so I f I feel like Oscar because it was his idea to bring me on as the master writer chair how long ago now that was a while ago 10 years a decade I know a decade ago and I I've proof of concept yeah I mean seriously can can I actually say something about this talk yeah so this is this is partly I've had a long uh interaction throughout my career with the university system it's uh my parents were academics although I'm not an academic I am a professor and what became clear to me at a certain point is that what the university provided in addition to education were places for intellectuals to practice their craft.

[24:32] Oskar Eustis: Martha News Newsbaum sits in a chair of philosophy at the University of Chicago, not in order to teach, but because our society has decided that universities are the institutions that should support philosophers. And that's part of the University of Chicago's function is to support a great American philosopher. Theater should do exactly the same thing with playwrights. That's why we needed to say, wait a minute, it's our job as nonprofit institutions to provide a place for the artists who make up our field to practice their craft. So we created the Master Writer Chair with the indispensable help of the Mellon Foundation, who haven't given us money for it for many years, but they were beautiful thought partners, Diane Ragsdale there in starting this program.

We brought Suzan-Lori on, and the whole idea was here's a master writer chair. And what I think Suzan-Lori has done over the last 10 years, if you look at Father Comes Home from the Wars, if you look at Book of Grace, if you look now at White Noise, is demonstrate that the existence of that space, that chair to sit in, has made possible a glorious renaissance of her writing at a point in her career where an awful lot of American playwrights have ceased to produce anything of interest. And she's producing the greatest work, uh, forgive me, the greatest work you've ever written, I think, in a lot of people. I think I'm getting better. And that's improving. To me, as a materialist, that is just proof positive of the fact is that you, if you take a great artist and you give them the security and the space to do their work, they will reward you as a society a hundredfold. It's what we should be doing.

[26:18] Oskar Eustis: And so, how does it fit into kind of the other things you do, Suzan-Lori? Like you mentioned, uh, before we turned on the mics that you're working on a TV show also. And like how what is it? You're in the hard part of the TV show right. But so how does that feed into how does your work at the public and, uh, feed into kind of everything you do? How does it fit into your whole career?

[26:42] Suzan-Lori Parks: It allows me to, well, I want to also mention things at the public because something I'm, uh, also excited about here is Watch Me Work.

[26:51] Oskar Eustis: Yeah.

[26:52] Suzan-Lori Parks: I was gonna bring that up. That's just this, this um, and it's basically it's a free writing class. And anyone can come, right?

[26:58] Oskar Eustis: Anyone.

[26:58] Suzan-Lori Parks: Anyone can come, and if you can't physically be there actually in person, you can tweet us your questions and I'll answer you in real time. And it's about the title's called Watch Me Work, but it's about your work, your creative process, not mine. And I'm very proud. We've been doing it for 10 years. And it's every week, basically, it seems like pretty much every week when we can get because we do it on the Mes, on the resonant, uh, in the lobby, basically. And we just welcome anybody who wants to walk in off the street and get some feedback about their writing or their any kind of creative project that they're working on. Um, so that's I'm very excited about that because that the Master Writer Chair has given me the opportunity to create this community of people who, um, need, uh, encouragement for their work.

[27:46] Oskar Eustis: How has that in turn encouraged you?

[27:49] Suzan-Lori Parks: Well, it's, uh, I mean, and that's one of the things we're talking about that sometimes, um, the best thing to do when you feel when you begin to question, uh, your role in the world or what the world is doing is to be of service. And, um, it's really important that I am of service to, uh, you know, my actual students at NYU or my, you know, students, you know, at Watch Me Work who come and go as they please.

[28:18] Oskar Eustis: Right.

[28:18] Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah. So it's really joyful. It's a very, very joyful thing. Um, and helpful also I think, uh, people say they get a lot of help from the class, but, um, but then we have, yeah, these ginormous things like writing TV shows and writing movies and I did the, we should mention, we should mention Native Son which just got released, yeah, on HBO. I know it's a big, it's been a big week. Like what's up with all that stuff.

[28:44] Suzan-Lori Parks: But I, I do think that being here allows me the freedom to be, uh, of service to the culture in all aspects. And so while maybe another writer might have to take jobs just to make sure that the food bill is paid or whatever, um, because I don't have to do that I can be very, uh, mindful when I say, you know, I would like to do Native Son, um, I'm not doing it to make a check.

[29:22] Oskar Eustis: Right.

[29:23] Suzan-Lori Parks: You know, and, and also from my own observation the difference between Suzan-Lori and other writers is of course she's gonna work in film. Of course she's gonna work in television partly because of the financial roads and partly because they're great mediums with really interesting things to do. But because she's got the chair it means that no matter what else she does, she's got a home in the theater. And that stays a serious part of her life.

[29:46] Oskar Eustis: Yeah.

[29:46] Suzan-Lori Parks: Not just something like, oh yeah, I can't wait to get back to the theater. But the next five or seven or fifteen years are gonna be filled up with these TV projects. But maybe when there's a, it's just like she can go do whatever she wants in film or television.

[29:58] Oskar Eustis: Right.

[29:58] Suzan-Lori Parks: And her home is right here. The chair is sitting there. And that's, that's to me the ideal of a sort of balanced life that we should be providing for more artists.

[30:08] Oskar Eustis: Yeah, and for me, theater is where I get to do my deepest, uh, digging. You know, my most thorough, uh, and thoughtful, uh, and difficult explorations of the human condition.

[30:23] Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah.

[30:23] Oskar Eustis: You know, be, and because you know it's presented in real time, live people talking to the living, um, it's, uh, it's like nothing else. So you can't beat it for that. And then, you know, when you do a TV show or a film, you reach maybe more people, you know, more easily, you know, and that's cool. But you know, there's nothing like the living.

[30:45] Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah.

[30:47] Oskar Eustis: Uh, what's on your plate next, Oscar? What are you up to? You've got a, you've got, I mean the rest of this season and next season and then this is a summer. There's a lot of things going on.

[31:00] Oskar Eustis: Um, none of them more important than White Noise, which has been just a seminal moment in my artistic life, honestly. I've just, I have loved this process and the fact that Suzan-Lori and I have been close friends for 30 years and that we get to do this, we teach together. You know, it's just, it's just such an affirmation of a life in the theater. This is what you hope for. You hope for a life where you create relationships that actually extend over the course of your lifetime and that mean something.

[31:29] Suzan-Lori Parks: Um, does this play have a life after over the state of the state of the state?

[31:31] Oskar Eustis: Oh, it'll probably, there's no question has a life. We don't know what that life is gonna look like, but, um, we hope it'll grow up and you know, get a job. The, uh, um, but you know, right now the overarching task, I'm nearing, you know, the, the one can see the finish line of my career, not in the immediate, but you know, uh, a few years down the road. The big job that I have now is to try to, uh, make sure that the gains that we have made at the public theater, uh, over the last 15 years are permanent. And that what the public theater stands for, not just that it will institutionally survive in perpetuity or as long as the climate allows us to survive, but that also the things that it stands for, the example that it sets, the model it sets for other than the influence that we can have over the culture is permanent and firmly, uh, embedded.

[32:25] Oskar Eustis: And that's in order to achieve that, you sort of have to work on a lot of different fronts. You have to make art that matters to people. You have to make art that reaches people that don't normally get reached by that art. You have to give people the chance to make art who aren't given the chance to make that art. You have to build an institution, including a board of directors that understands what it stands for. You have to have the buildings, the places, the palaces for the people to contain that. You gotta get the money in the bank, the reserves and the endowment that allow it you're gonna be.

[33:07] Oskar Eustis: You wear that three-piece suit. That's the really exciting thing for me right now on a macro level, you know, when I have to get out of the rehearsal room and do something else. It's trying to make sure that, uh, that this institution and what it stands for is a permanent part of the American landscape.

[33:24] Suzan-Lori Parks: And Oskar, what's next for you?

[33:26] Oskar Eustis: Working.

[33:27] Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah, you're working. You know what I'm doing. Some more work. Can you tell us about the TV show?

[33:31] Suzan-Lori Parks: Some more it's, it's Aretha they're doing the, uh, yeah, yeah that Nat Geo is doing the and, uh, imagine Brian Grazer and Ron Howard's company they're teaming up and doing the next installment of the Genius series and they did it started with Einstein and then Picasso and now they're doing Aretha Franklin and you know I'm just honored to be asked to help tell her story.

[33:55] Oskar Eustis: I'm lucky to have you and just it's just a joy and what a great force she is. Do you work on multiple plays at once? It sounds like because we Oscar was telling about a play that's what's coming next then which one's coming next it's like if you are you're in a room and you have many turntables.

[34:13] Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah, you know I mean like on different levels you know like a turntable near the ceiling and a turntable on the floor and every table has a turntable so on each turntable and you Oscar you work like this too and we all do.

[34:24] Oskar Eustis: You got a different, you got a different right you got a different piece of vinyl spinning on each turntable and that's kind of so today it's you work on that one and then you get that going and you kind of get that going.

[34:37] Suzan-Lori Parks: So you're doing so you're a DJ kind of or you know and let's just say then then you know that puts me in the the suit with the pencil on the calendar trying to figure out when is Suzan-Lori going to be enough done with the reason that we can start rehearsals for the next show.

[34:54] Oskar Eustis: Next show's gonna be fantastic.

[34:56] Suzan-Lori Parks: I know, I know, I know and we got the show.

[34:58] Oskar Eustis: Right we got the show we just gotta get it into a calendar.

[34:58] Suzan-Lori Parks: I know can you tell us anything about that show and what it's about or no no?

[35:04] Oskar Eustis: Oh, okay.

[35:05] Suzan-Lori Parks: But it, but it that was my guess. But maybe you'll come back again and talk about it.

[35:09] Oskar Eustis: I'm sure we will.

[35:10] Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah, exactly. You know it's that I feel like I feel my work is best developed with some level of privacy.

[35:21] Suzan-Lori Parks: You know, you like with a pot, though the water boils best with the lid on it.

[35:24] Oskar Eustis: Yep.

[35:25] Suzan-Lori Parks: And that's really my work.

[35:27] Oskar Eustis: So yeah.

[35:28] Suzan-Lori Parks: Well, we can't wait to see it when it's ready. Um, thank you both.

[35:31] Oskar Eustis: Thanks for doing this.

[35:31] Suzan-Lori Parks: Nice to talk to you.

[35:32] Gordon Cox: Thank you.

[35:40] Gordon Cox: That was Suzan-Lori Parks and Oskar Eustis, the writer and director of the new play White Noise, now playing at the public theater. If you like what you've heard on this and other episodes of Stagecraft, don't forget to rate and review us on iTunes and subscribe wherever finer podcasts are dispensed. Next week, I'll be talking to Kelly O'Hara, the Tony winning Broadway favorite who's now back on Broadway in Kiss Me Kate. Until then, see you at the theater.