Suzan-Lori Parks Interview (page: 2 / 7) Pulitzer Prize for Drama	Print Interview

What was the experience like, writing Topdog/Underdog? Was it different in any way from your other plays?

Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah. It was like silver liquid being poured in the back of my head. That's what that was like.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Usually, it's just like I can hear talking. Topdog was like -- I thought that if I looked up -- I didn't, as I was writing, because I wrote for three days, or 72 hours. People said, "Well, you wrote from this day to that," but it was like a three-day period. Wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote, and I thought if I looked up, I would see someone pouring silver liquid into the back of my head. That's what it felt like. It was just like "I know."

[ Key to Success ] Vision

That's one of those bricks, those story bricks. The lesson from that is: I am not a three-day writer. Though I was, just that once.

A few years ago, you had this idea to write 365 plays in 365 days. You've described it as almost like a prayer to the theater, or to art. How did that come about? It's still going on.

Suzan-Lori Parks: It is. The production is still going on. The production started in November 2006 and will continue through November 12, 2007. My husband Paul was there when it sort of came, from the great prompter who stands off stage, continually whispering things in my ear.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. We were hanging out at our house in Venice Beach, and I said to Paul, my husband, "I'm going to write..." and I talked in this voice, which is funny, because maybe the nasal tone thing -- Oh, it gets kind of creepy! "I'm going to write a play a day, and I'm going to call it 365 Days/365 Plays. Wow!" Paul wears his sunglasses -- his shades -- all the time, 'cause he's a blues musician. He's sitting on the couch like this, and he goes, "Yeah, baby. That'd be cool," like that. I said, "I'm going to do this", and he said, "That'd be cool." There it began. I ran upstairs and started right then. It was the 13th of November 2003, I think, or maybe 2002. I can't remember. Anyway, 2002 or 2003. And I wrote a play a day. The first one was called Start Here.

[ Key to Success ] Vision

It's about Krishna and Arjuna and their starting, their beginning. Arjuna, the human, he doesn't really want to do it. He's scared, and Krishna the god is saying, "Oh, come on. I can hear them writing your name in the book. Let us go forward." Every day after that, I just wrote a play a day, and now we're doing it in, gosh, I think it's 14 or 15 different networks in this country and abroad, each with 52 theaters. Each of these 14 or 15 networks around the globe each have 52 theaters, and simultaneously, they're doing the plays. So there's hundreds and hundreds of theaters. My producer, Bonnie Metzgar, is a genius at bringing people together. We're so smiley about this. We're charging a dollar a day for the play, so we're making no money, hand over fist, and we're having a ball.

One effect is that some of the bigger theater companies, who are kind of up on the hill, are joining hands with smaller community-based companies. They don't usually have a lot of contact, and now they're coming together. So in a way, you're bringing the theater community together. Was that intentional?

Suzan-Lori Parks: Not in the writing of it. I have nothing to say. I have things to show.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I just wanted to say thank you to theater for being. I wanted to say thank you, and the way I say thank you is by writing in the way I wanted to. I wanted to embrace the everyday occurrence. I would wake up in the morning and say, "Oh look, there's a rabbit running across the lawn." Hopping, I suppose. "Oh, the play for the day is called Rabbit," for example. Or perhaps a writer or someone had died. I'd wake up in the morning and hear that Carol Shields, the wonderful writer, had died, so there's a play for Carol Shields, or Johnny Cash or Idi Amin, and they would get their tribute plays. Or I'd wake up in the morning and think, "Oh, I want to write one of my project plays," I call them. So I'd write Project Ulysses or Project Macbeth or Project Tempest. Or "Oh, I think I'll write Hamlet. Hamlet is a great play, and The Hamlet is a great novel by William Faulkner. Put them together and write Hamlet the Hamlet."

I would embrace the great enormous "whatever" by writing. I just wanted to say thank you, and I say thank you by writing. So all these theaters coming together, and the small theaters working with the large theaters and people going, "Oh my gosh, for the first time, we can cast Latin American actors or Chicano actors, because we're experimenting and we're having fun." It's amazing.

Sometimes they're done as curtain raisers, and sometimes they're the whole show.

Suzan-Lori Parks: Exactly. Sometimes they're done as little features in the lobby while folks are coming into a mainstage production. The City of Seattle is doing a play a day. Every single day, they're doing the play that was written on that day. It rains a lot in Seattle, so a lot of the pictures that I've seen, they're doing it under a series of umbrellas. It's gorgeous. Each city is doing them in their own fashion, as they choose, because we really wanted the individual cities to take charge. In Washington, D.C. they're doing them, and in Atlanta, Chicago, the Northeast. They call it "The Storm Front," because the show will move from Boston to Connecticut. It will move like a storm front. People are having fun.

In a way, you're sort of demystifying playwriting by saying, "I can write a play a day."

Suzan-Lori Parks: Exactly, which doesn't make it any less incredible somehow.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. It doesn't make it any less like, "Wow," by saying, "I can write a play a day, and so can you, and so can you, and so can we all." Or a poem. A lot of people have said, "I'm going to write a poem a day." Great! Or a lot of folks coming up, younger writers, have said, "I'm going to do it, too." Great! So they feel empowered. It doesn't make it any less special. What's that saying in Zen meditation? "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water." So it doesn't make it any less special. We're just trying to say it's out there. It's available to everyone. It's something that everyone can do. We open up the window of opportunity in your mind, and we're not necessarily encouraging everybody to become a playwright, but we're encouraging everyone to open up the window of opportunity and see what happens.

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