On with Kara Swisher - Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

In her latest play, Sally & Tom, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks tackles what is, arguably, one of the most complicated and personal chapters in American history: the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman who gave birth to at least six of his children. Kara and Parks discuss the play in the context of her past work, as well as our nation's trend of revising history to sand down its rough edges, and why wrestling with our nation’s past is a sign of love. Sally & Tom is now playing at the Public Theater. You can buy tickets at: https://publictheater.org/productions/season/2324/sally--tom/  Correction: Suzan-Lori Parks' Plays for the Plague Year begins in March 2020. In a previous version of this episode, we said it began in March 2022. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find Kara on Threads/Instagram as @karaswisher  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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She was the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant and a Guggenheim Fellow. She's written a slew of plays, including one about the pandemic, Plays from the Pl plague years, in which she also starred in 2023. She's the author of a novel titled Getting Mother's Body. She's a screenwriter for the biopic The United States vs. Billie Holiday, among others, and has written for television, and she also plays and sings in a band, Sula and the Joyful Noise. I saw her latest play, Sally and Tom, at the Public Theater in New York recently. It's about a theater troupe that's writing and performing a play about the former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, the woman that some people refer to as his mistress. But that's not an appropriate description. She was, in fact, the mother of at least six of his

children and as one of the hundreds of enslaved people on his plantation, also his legal property. The play is Quintessential Parks, a complicated and personal take on U.S. history and race relations, as well as about love and reparations. It's coming at a time of pushback against teaching the real racial history of the United States, with Republicans proposing more than 100 bills in more than 30 states to restrict or kill diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in schools, industry, and the government. So I want to talk to her about all of that and how she's thinking about history in her latest works. Our question this week comes from Aminatou Sow, a writer and co-founder of Tech Lady Mafia.

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Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. Susan Laurie Parts, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Cara. This is on. Susan Laurie Parts, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Cara. This is fun. I know. I'm excited to talk. You have so many titles. You're a playwright, a novelist, a screenwriter, a showrunner, a songwriter, an actor, an instructor, a musician. Besides exhausting me, which one of those feels most comfortable? And are there any that don't fit quite right from your perspective? I'm a human being. So, yeah. No, they all feel good. I mean,

I don't allow a title if it doesn't feel right, and I am doing the work in all those fields. But let's talk first about your latest play, Sally and Tom. It first premiered in Minneapolis at the Guthrie Theater, but now it's showing at the Public Theater in New York. I loved it. I thought it was so beautiful. It was a beautiful play, but also very funny. There are two storylines here. It's about a female playwright, Luce, her romantic partner, Mike, and their very progressive theater troupe called, ironically, Good Company. They're preparing to put on a play.

I don't think it's ironic that you did it on purpose. They're preparing to put on a play. She's still in the process of writing. In fact, they're all in the process of rewriting it. The play is about Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman with whom President Thomas Jefferson had a decades-long relationship and several children. She was 14 when it started, and he owned her. She was also the half-aunt to

his children and the half-sister to his wife, who had died early. For those who don't know, can you tell us more about the background and controversy of the real Sally and Tom story? This is not a love story, as you'd say. Why would you want to take it on, and why now? Well, yeah, why now? I started taking it on 10 years ago. So it's been a long time in the making where some of my works like Top Dog, Underdog, I wrote in three days. Sailing Time, I wrote, it was a longer train to an equally lovely destination. But at the time, I was writing a play called Father Comes Home from the Wars, which is about enslaved people, and it's kind of, I love myths. So I was sort of centering enslaved people in a mythic context,

combining lots of myths like the Bhagavad Gita, like the Odyssey, like the Iliad, all kinds of these great African myths and all that to sort of create this narrative in which enslaved people during 1864 were at the center of this. And so I was sitting there, and as I do, when I have a moment, you know, something else will enter into my mind. So we were, you know, in tech, you know, you're in theater, and we were in the Ansbacher in the public theater, you know, sitting there in tech and all that. And I'm sitting there going, okay, you know, this is cool, this is cool, this is cool. Oh, I'm the one who did Lincoln and Booth, so I thought Sally and Tom, Lincoln and Booth, Sally and Tom, wouldn't that be fun? But why? I mean, it's obviously the story has been around a lot, but why this story? Right. I love patterns. So I just realized a pattern.

So when something speaks to me, I don't ask why necessarily. So Lincoln and Booth came to me one day. I said, okay. Sally and Tom, okay. So I don't know. So the why in the moment, I don't know. But when, you know, if I'm a fish swimming in the ocean and the lure, you know, the bait, you know, comes from the cosmos and it goes, oh, and it catches you and you go, yeah, that's my story I want to tell. So that's, you know, so that's good enough for me.

The play's about writing a play called The Pursuit of Happiness, which had been previously named E Pluribus Unum out of many one. Explain the structure. Why do you set it up that way instead of just focusing on the historical narrative about Sally and Tom? And in fact, what they're doing is historiography as actors in the midst of telling a story and how to tell it in the end, changing the past. So they're trying to do a historiography in a lot of ways. Or they're trying to get it right.

Because historiography, I mean, history is, you know, that phrase, history is what's written by the winners. Or whatever you say. History is written by the ones who could write it down, whether they were winners or not, you know. So my people are the people who weren't allowed to read or write. And oral history is only so good, you know? So my people are the people who weren't allowed to read or write. So, and oral history is only so good, you know? So saying that we're trying to change history implies that we believe everything that was written down. Yes, that's a fair point. That they're trying to figure out what history was. Yeah, they're trying to hear it. Like a writer would hear it.

They're trying to hear it. And it's not just 2024 people are trying to hear 1790s people. We're trying to hear each other. We are history in 2020. It's us, too. It's us and everything we do and don't do and all that. I was going to say the main character, Luz, is a playwright and an actor. She's black. She's in a romantic relation with a white guy who she feels dependent on to raise

money for the play's production. She's also playing Sally Hemings while he plays the man who owns her, Thomas Jefferson. Offstage, however, she's the brains of the operation and creative energy of the theater company. The play is a work in progress. She's a work in progress. And real life overlaps with her stage character, Sally. Talk about that interplay and talk about us that you just referred to. can invite myself and others into a conversation about beautiful things and about difficult things, about joy and about sad things, all those things. And so the only way to embrace Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson and their relationship was through theater. And what better? And then, well, then let's just make it about people putting on a play because it's not, to me, in Sally and Tom, the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson

isn't just about, you know, like race relations or those kinds of things or consent or these labels or these words that we use to frame things in our effort to understand them. To me, Sally and Tom is about how the world is made, how we make the world, how we make it every day, how we all have a hand in it. And so that's kind of why I put playmaking at the center of the story and what saves the narrative,

a group of people of all colors and stripes and persuasions coming together to create the narrative together. And that's what saves the play. That's what allows us to look into the past and say, okay, truth and reconciliation. We can find a way to go forward or find a way to at least talk about some of these difficult things. Right. Find a way to go forward or find a way to at least talk about some of these difficult things. Right. So talk about that because, you know, one of the things about the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson is, and you note this, is what's real as opposed to what's speculative.

So talk about how you wrestle with the question of what remains unknown as you wrote the play. Obviously, Luce is very preoccupied with this question. Yeah. I mean, so much is unknown about Sally Hemings. And like I said to you when we hung out a little bit in the theater before the show, there is a wealth of brilliant scholarship that has done some brilliant prize-winning, noteworthy, I don't know what you call it, create, I don't know the proper term for it. Historians, like Annette Gordon-Reed. Exactly, historians. And for me, because as I understood it, they were pieced together from things. I didn't want someone's piecing together of what might have been being my fiction. So I was very clear. So I stayed away

from Annette's brilliant book and others and focused on the art of theater and what that's about and how that can create a world. What I did is I went to Monticello a lot, and I stood around on the grounds, and I stood in the rooms, and I lay on the floor. The guides had a nice time with me, and I asked them questions. Before Sally Hemings' room was discovered, which was a couple of years ago, I was gently asking a guide, a tour guide, I know her room is here somewhere. I know it's here. I can feel it. She was here, right? And he said, no, no, ma'am, no, ma'am.

And of course, he was honest. That's as much as he knew. But you can feel things. I would stand in Patsy's room and the scene where the women are lying on the floor, that came from that because her room is— Was just above his. Just above her father's. Which is downstairs. Yeah, I've been there many times.

And also, a lot has changed in the storytelling there. It used to be Mr. Jefferson and very laudatory. And it's been controversial, too, but it's very much focused on the enslaved people, much more so, including the people who are doing the tours, which has changed rather drastically, I would say, which is interesting. Yeah, we don't have to pretend things didn't happen. We just have to continually find a way to have nuanced conversations about difficult

things. Good luck. Well, again, we'll get to that. I know you're doing that here. You're absolutely doing it. Here I am. In Jesse Green's review of the play in The Times, he wrote, lumpiness and bagginess are often part of Park's aesthetic.

In her plays, life and history are never smooth. We cannot see everything underneath the present. In particular, her Jefferson demonstrates, it's nearly impossible to recognize the evil we do in choosing to abide the evil we live in. Still, she argues you cannot merely blame the times. Do you agree with that? That you can't blame the times that he lived in? If he says I'm a man of my times, when he says that.

Yeah. Yeah, because there were other, his contemporaries who were of equal social status who did things differently. And he notes that himself, you know, Ben Franklin freed his enslaved people, as did George Washington who freed his enslaved people. And there were, John Adams did not own enslaved people. So, there were different ways to do it. And I think that's a call to all of us, that we just can't sink into this morass of like, you know, this is the times I'm living in. We're making the times. We are the times. And just that excitement, I think, that excitement that I get knowing that I have a hand in the way the world is made. So the play directly calls out the founder, who wrote All Men Are Created Equal, as a racist and sexual predator, really.

You're also talking about trying to understand a relationship that has a pretty deeply fucked up power dynamic, which is a hard thing to depict, right, in a lot of ways. Yeah. And since we never use those words in the play, one is left to draw her, his, their own conclusions from it. So, go ahead, sorry. No, no, no, I just wanted, that's very important. I mean, me, you know, you, we're writers here, you and me, we labor, I do anyway, we labor over every single word, you, right. So those words are not used in the play. No. Yeah.

Although you do, you don't use also consent. You don't use a lot of words, although it's certainly implied. And certainly implied that she doesn't have a choice. And she says that to him. She does say, yeah, she does say that. She calls him a liar and a coward. She tells him she hates him. She tells us that sometimes she doesn't want to even talk to

him ever again. She says, it wasn't rape as such, or maybe that's all it was. He says, I loved her. He says, imagine, I was on a ship, the ship was in the middle of the ocean, and I felt like I was in a sea of tears. So they're saying things that need to be said so we can get to know them. Right, right, exactly, which makes it more difficult. So we're at a different time now even than we were four years ago. Republicans are fear-mongering with the idea that white kids are being taught that being white is bad. Ron DeSantis in Florida is being awful with this Stop Woke Act and claiming that black people benefited from slavery. As you're researching, Sally and Tom,

how much was America's current rewriting of history in the forefront of your mind? But if you started a decade ago, perhaps you saw it coming. Oh, yeah. Well, we've been trying to rewrite. I mean, that's the American dream, just like pretend it didn't happen. Yeah. The memory hole is deep. Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes. And it's unfortunate because it does not allow us as beautiful human beings to wrestle with the stuff that I feel could truly make this country truly great. I think that's where we get our greatness from. When we look at difficult things and we find ways to talk about things, even if we're not always agreeing, you know. That's what I feel. I mean, you know, our dads were in the military. You know, I grew up and again, my dad wasn't a, you know, gung-ho like patriot dude. He joined the military because that was the only way that he could get afford to go to college. And my mom's family was a little better off, but not much. And this is the way that they could afford to just live. But at the same time, we had a respect for this country

and what it could offer. And, you know, Selling Time is very much a love letter to America. And it's a love letter to theater, but it's not one of those love letters like, hi, I love you. Let's make a heart. Oh, it's all good. You know, that kind of bullshit. It's like, hey, I love you. So let's have a conversation. All right. Let's wrestle. Let's wrestle it out, you know? Well, in that regard, in another recent play of yours, plays for the play gear called The Play for James Baldwin, who was this mentor of yours, I'm going to play a clip that comes just after his character has finished telling you that American history is revisionist in nature and that it feeds on the lack of memory. He says there are

people of all ages in America right now who have dementia. The country is stuffed to the gills with some crazy people. I'm not only talking about people who consider themselves white. These are interesting times. And you say... Any tips, Mr. Baldwin? Don't fear pain. Don't fear joy. Say what you think, even if it's unpopular, even among those who you consider to be your people. Shout if you have to, but don't shout so much that you lose your voice. That can happen, even to you, even to me. Praise and encourage the young folks. Look into the eyes of the elderly.

Don't forget about the elderly. They want you to forget about the elderly. They want you to forget those who have been there. Revision is history. They want to pretend things didn't happen. It's a time to work, work history, work memory, which is the flabbiest of all American muscles. America's so muscular, popping out of its own clothing, so proud of the way it looks when it walks down the street. As it should be, I guess. Pride on such levels is in direct proportion to the shame.

Oh, that's a line. Also American flabbiness of memory. Your mentor speaks to you from the grave via you. So talk about the flabby muscle. Yeah, that was a funny thing, because that's my mentor's, me putting words in James Baldwin's mouth. That's right. That's right. But it sounds like him. Sounds like something he'd say. I just was listening to him talking to Toni Morrison. It had some of that in it. It was that topic, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the actor in that clip is Leland Fowler, who plays Devin and Nathan

in Sally and Tom right now. So we're just continuing the wonderful working relationship. But the flabbiest of all American muscles. Yeah. Like I said, I do think we in America need to just work those muscles.

But we don't want to work that muscle. That's a muscle we would rather atrophy from what I can tell. Yes, yes. And we don't want to eat our vegetables and all the things that we don't want to do because they benefit structures that do not benefit our long-term health. I have a kid, you know, we talk this talk all day, how to choose your foods and your friends and, actually to look again, to respect the past and to look again. The conversations I've heard coming out of people who have seen Sally and Tom, one person described himself as a, what does he call it? A country club Republican. He said, well, I'm a country, you know, he's a white man, you know, I'm a country club Republican. Well, I'm just saying, you know, because we don't want to assume,

you know, I'm a country, because, you know, Clarence Thomas, hello. I'm a country club Republican. And we didn't just start having this wonderful conversation about the play. And he had come to see the play because he wanted to have a conversation. And so he's working his muscle and the flabbiest of all muscles. It is, James Baldwin does not say where that muscle is located. It is, of course, the heart. 100%. We'll be back in a minute. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees,

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I want to talk about how the play Sally and Tom fits in your larger body of work. We just spoke about plays for the play gear, which was its own kind of play. about plays for the plague year, which was its own kind of play. But in 2002, you became the first black woman to be awarded a Pulitzer in drama for your play Top Dog, Underdog, which also premiered at the Public Theater and starred Jeffrey Wright and Don Cheadle. What a cast. I did see this. Top Dog, Underdog does a similar thing as Sally and Tom by linking U.S. history and the history of slavery to modern systemic racism

in, I would say, very discreet ways. It's about two brothers named Lincoln and Booth who are living together. And Lincoln, a black man, has a job playing Abraham Lincoln, who tourists shoot at. Once again, you're using the format of play acting to make your point, correct? Because all the world's a stage? Right. because all the world's a stage. Right.

Well, Lincoln and Booth are very different from Sally and Tom, Luce and Mike. Luce and Mike are very highbrow. She's writing these complex and long monologues about social justice and change, while Lincoln and Booth speak in vernacular with lots of swearing. The plays are different, but it seems to me there are similarities between the two sets of characters and their trajectories. Maybe you don't agree with me, but I felt there were.

But that's just me because I reread it again. Thank you. No, but thank you for even – I mean, this is just a cool conversation to have. I appreciate it. I was telling the actors in Sally and Tom, I was saying that Sallyally and tom is like top dog underdog for everybody so if you you know you see top dog underdog you enjoy it it moves you and you know encourages you to wrestle with history you know sally and tom is a place where more kinds of people have an in have an in. And it is the same kind of activity, you know, wrestling with history, finding your place, asking if you belong, where's the place for me? Also in all my work, I would say, even

the songs I write with my band, all my work, there is a, what I call, do I tell the actors, it's a net, an invisible net. I think the color is green and it's made of love. And so one can throw themselves into the work, whether as an audience member or as an actor or as a designer, whatever, member of the team, and they will throw themselves fully, and the work will catch them. It's made that way so that you can go to your deepest place and be okay. And whoever you happen to be. So it's interesting because every week on the show, we do a segment called Ask an Expert, where we get a question phoned in from an outside expert. This week, writer Aminatou Sow had a question for you.

Hello, I'm Aminatou Sow, and I'm a writer. The big question I would like to ask is if you have noticed a palpable change or evolution in the predominantly white theater audiences that attend your plays. Oh, wow. Good question. That's a really cool question. Have I seen a change in evolution in the predominantly white theater audiences that attend my plays? I haven't been taking any exit polls. And it's a great question. And because my work varies so much from project to project, I'm just thinking about this. I have not ever thought about this. And I would say that we, all the people, are getting to know each other more thoroughly in our infinite variety.

That is something. That is because I would say, aha, yeah, so maybe 20 years ago when I was playwriting and I would go and do a talkback or whatever, people would say, it was a common question, often from a person who was not of African descent.

They would go, what do black people think about, huh? Like that. So there was an assumption of a monothought, right? And now I do think as they see the beautiful multiplicity, the beautiful variety of what it means to be black, that there is a greater understanding. Just like black folks, we look at European and American culture and we go, there's lots of different kinds of white folks. culture and we go, there's lots of different kinds of white folks. I think the audiences are going, wow, there are lots of different ways to experience the black experience. When I was growing up again,

also my dad and mom, it was the black experience. It was a thing. And now it is a many thing, a many splendid. We contain multitudes, right? That's right. Walt Whitman. I always say that. That's right. Years ago when people were talking about what do gay people think, I was like, we contain multitudes. I don't know. We haven't met today.

Right. Exactly. I have no idea what that conservative gay man over there thinks in any way. And usually it's bad things for me. But no one would say, but someone would assume, right, that there's a game on it. There's just one idea. And is it, do you think, Karen, do you think it's because they just haven't been exposed to enough folk from the tribe, from the group? Or just not thoughtful, that's all.

You're rough. I'm rough. Oh, you're rough. I'm like, oh, come on, peace, love, and understanding. No, they can do their homework. I never help them. Like, one person one time when I was gay, they said, I don't know if I understand. I said, well, you should read a book.

I'm not helping you. I'm not here to help you on your journey towards liking gay people. Anyway, you know what I mean. Right on. I hear you. But speaking of top dog, underdog, Jeffrey Wright plays the lead. He's fantastic. He's one of my favorite actors.

He plays the lead role in Monk in American Fiction. Obviously, he was in Angels in America. Astonishing. American Fiction is based on Percival Everett's Erasure. I'm hoping to interview him soon, which came out just before Top Dog, Underdog. I recently interviewed Cord Jefferson, who I've known many years,

a few weeks before he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for American Fiction. I think my favorite movie last year. And we spoke about how when he was a journalist, he felt like he was on the racism beat and still felt like that

after he started working in Hollywood. I often feel like that, being gay sometimes, like what do we think? Do you feel like focusing on race relations, racism in history is expected of you or are you just called to it?

How do you look at it? Because I do talk about gay issues a lot, too. Right. So do you feel like you're, like, letting gay people down if you don't? You know what I mean? Sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So there's a line in Sally and Tom when someone goes, is this a black play? And Scout goes, is this a black play? This isn't a black play. And K-Dub says, sure it is. And the actors were like, wow, that's a thorny moment. And I'm like, why is it seen as a negative? Yeah. It's a black play.

Yeah. It's a black play. Yeah. So I could reframe my, you know, I've been called to speak, to write, to sing the song. And the song comes from somebody like me, this body. Yeah. And so I will sing the song. And I don't think it's a, I think we each have a contribution to make. I think we each have a contribution to make, and if I'm thinking that having to maybe wrestle with racism is going to hold me back, then it will. If I think that wrestling with racism is just one more way that I can help a lot of people get free, then I'll wrestle with it. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of an argument I had recently about one of the people who used to run Marvel called Black Panther a black movie. And I was like, oh, it really is. It's the least of the things it is. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's, it's, it's, I know. And it was like, and they often go, how did, say, a woman's movie like Barbie do well or a black movie like black? I'm like, maybe they're just good movies that everybody likes and you know it was interesting i it was it was completely racist what this man said but that's

besides the point it's very much but you see it in the awards time when you know certain people get nominated or or lauded and certain people don't and you think oh okay i guess it is a woman's movie or it's a black movie you know yeah speaking of. Speaking of awards, Top Dog, Underdog didn't win a Tony until its revival in 2022. Playbill spoke to you about it afterwards. Let's play a clip from that interview. I feel like theater had a win tonight. Theater had a win. Like, culture took two steps forward.

Not just one step forward, two steps forward. We didn't just, you know, when we were on Broadway 20 years ago people said we broke the door down you know and a lot of people felt empowered to come behind us but for us to be recognized tonight is huge that that one foot we had in culture just stepped with both feet in and now I feel like it's about inclusion and excellence because Top Dog Underdog is a really fucking good play it ain't just I'm sorry I don't want to get into it but it's very important both are important inclusion and excellence and that we can all kinds of people can write at the very highest levels that's what I aspire to every time I sit down. Gosh I really like that idea because it's something I've been starting to try to explain

to people around this argument about DEI. What I say is, what's the opposite of DEI? Diversity, homogeneity, equity, unfairness, and exclusion. I was like, what is, like, there can be excellence and inclusion at the same time. And many people, including high-profile people I cover, are trying to act like it's not. But, you know, everything that happens badly is because of diversity and equity and inclusion and stuff like that. But talk about these two moments, 20 years apart, how you were breaking down doors in 2002, but recognition did not come until 2022. Talk about the idea of inclusion and excellence as both being important. Right. Well, I do feel like sometimes we're included so that we might be an example to why one should not include us in the future.

I do feel like sometimes we are included and not set up for success. I feel like that happens a lot. So then you can turn around and say, huh, see, she didn't, they didn't, see, see. But they weren't set up for success. That's a very important aspect. It should be part of it. But I do think it's very important when we invite folks to the table or into the room who have perhaps historically not been invited too often that it is also important to make it a genuine invitation, make it a real invitation, not some bullshit thing where two days later you can say, say, she didn't know, ha, ha, ha. You know, that's just, you know, that's just awful.

You know, I mean, we, I don't know about you, but, like, I feel like I work five times as hard for half as much. And that has become over the years okay. Okay. I'm okay. I love my work. Love, love, love it. I sometimes think my work's better because of that in many ways. It just gives me more edge, you know what I mean? Because it's just so much better than other people's. That's how I feel. I mean, the reporting stuff, not playwriting.

Yes, yes. for the plague year. But now the term DEA hiring, diversity hires are being used. You get another attack vector for the right. Bill Ackman, a hedge fund person, has been on a rampage about it, though I'm not sure why he is any expert. And I'm feeling like I should write a 90-part tweet on hedge fund investing, but I think I won't because I'm not that arrogant. I mean, honestly. It's also venture capitalists discussing Ukraine. I've had enough of that. But what's your reaction to the backlog? Because they're implying that while trying to make businesses, universities, and other places more diverse, we're giving up those expectations. What's your answer to that when you think about it?

It's now said out loud in a way that it wasn't before. I'm trying to formulate a sentence other than, you know, please. and people who choose to believe otherwise are choosing to believe what my grandmother would call a bald-faced lie to serve their own purposes. Sally and Tom, I mean, well, let's just take top dog, underdog. It's not just good because it's about you know

race relations or whatever it's it's like I said it's a fucking great play it's beautifully structured now it stands

toe to toe with any wonderfully beautifully written play by anybody and I'm I'm I'm pleased about that

I'm pleased that it's gotten the recognition uh sally and tom is another beautifully structured play and it stands with other beautifully written structured plays and we uh just because someone's brown or black or gay or whatever doesn't mean they lack certain abilities they just perhaps have mean they lack certain abilities. They just perhaps have often have not been afforded the opportunities to succeed. And that is built in to a lot of systems in this country. It just is. It just is. And that's not coming from hate. It's coming from love. Because when you love an institution or when you love a country, you're going to continue to have a conversation with it and say, come on.

It's such a beautiful idea. And people still come here from all over the world because this is such a wonderful place and much more wonderful than where they're living. And that's what Sally and Tom, Sally and Tom, it's black people are in the show, white people are in the show, an Asian woman is in the show, specifically Korean-American. She's wonderful. Sunmi Chovet. Yeah. Fantastic.

She did a great job. You know, I think it's the idea of living in abundance or living in scarcity, and those minds are in scarcity in a lot of ways. They want to think, and have never had a day of scarcity in their lives at the same time. It's also living in love or living in hate. Right, right. That's exactly right, yeah. Let me ask two more questions. One about the play for The Plague Year, which debuted in 2022.

You were doing this too. Also, your onstage debut as an actor. You play the writer who gets locked up with the hubby and the kid because of COVID. The writer starts writing a play a day to stay sane. The play is separated into days and not acts. Besides being ridiculously prolific, what is it like to switch roles and be the limelight on the stage, not just acting, but also singing? You wrote the songs, you're in a band, Sula and the Noise. Did it change your perspective about writing? After all, Luce is also both the playwright and the lead character. I know. What's going on? I know. The veil is lifting. The veil is lifting.

The veil is lifting and here we are. It just makes sense. I mean, I was writing this character of the writer in plays for the Plague Year, and then Oscar Eustace, who is the artistic director of the public theater, said, well, do it, and you be in it. And I was like, oh, wow, and it had not occurred to me that I would be in it. I'm such a ham. I love doing public speaking, and, of course, I love playing music on stage, and I'm such a ham. I love doing public speaking. And of course, I love playing music on stage, and I'm such a ham. The actors in our company of Plays for the Plague Year were so generous and kind

that they just embraced me. And I learned so much from them and continue to. What did you learn from being on stage? If I put you in a play, that's my way of saying I love you. I realize that. So everyone who made it into a play, I was saying I love you to George Floyd, to Kyle Sinter, everybody, every single person. To Thomas Jefferson. Yeah. Yeah.

I love you. I believe in you. Come on. Come on. Come on now. Like my grandmother would say, come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that. You know, I had a grandmother in Chicago, my dad's mom,

and then my grandmother in Texas, far west Texas, my mother's mom. And both of their favorite words were resilience. They had very different upbringings, very different educational, you know, one grandmother a schoolteacher, the other grandmother a seamstress. Resilience, that was their guiding word. That's in Sally and Tom, too, resilience. Yeah, yeah, she does. She uses the word resilience. Sally Hemings does use that word. Yeah. I learned that maybe I wrote Plays for the Plague Year because

I could do night after night after night, stand on stage and be myself. Well, that's a good enough reason. So my last question, you're also an author, you're a novelist, good Lord, you're prolific. Oh my goodness. I'm busy and you're very busy. I did a very quick and easy read of your funny novel again, Getting Mother's Body, which is very funny. I'm sorry, it just is. It's about moving around a body. Oddly enough, I actually unearthed my dad and moved him to West Virginia so my grandmother could have him next to her when she died. So I know about moving bodies quite a lot. I know, right? I wrote a whole piece.

Wow. I wrote a whole story in the Washington Post about it. Wow. You wrote something that really stuck with me. In the last page, I mean, it threw out. It's very funny. I recommend it to lots of people, make you laugh. When I seen her bones, I knew what we all knew.

We's all going to end up in a grave someday, but there's stops between then and now, which I thought was a perfect way to talk about what life is, stops between then and now. What is your next stop? A podcast? Are you going to take over my job? What is your next stop? I'm? Are you going to take over my job? What is your next stop?

I'm going to continue to subscribe to your show because I love listening to it. Because it's so cool to listen to, you know, you wrestle with these in a loving way. Not so much love. You're tough, man. It's a version of love. No, no, it's good. It's the kind of love that we need. I'm writing a second novel.

I'm building a new show from the band up this time. So I'm hanging out and playing lots of gigs. We play Joe's Pub on the 29th of April. Playing gigs with my band and then gonna build my next show from a series of songs that then will

be on. About? I'm not gonna tell you. Why not? Cause water boils better when the lid will on about. I'm not going to tell you. Why not? Because water boils better when the lid is on it. Okay. What about the novel? Same thing. It's also set in far west Texas in the 70s.

Okay. And it's over there on my, you know, the board that you put the pins. The storyboard. That's what it is. So how's it cooking? It's cooking great. I was up at 3 in the morning this morning writing. So life is good.

All right. Well, that's what you do, and you do it so well. Bless your heart. Thank you so much, Susan Laurie Parks. What a delight. What a wonderful play. I highly recommend this play. I can't believe it, but it's very funny.

It made me so happy after I left. Oh, I'm so pleased. Thank you. It's got a lot of hope in it, and it's very funny. It made me so happy after I left. Oh, I'm so pleased. Yeah. Thank you. It's got a lot of hope in it. And it feels like a hopeless time. So I really enjoyed it. And I really appreciate your talent.

Thank you. Thank you so much for hanging out today. Thank you. On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Kateri Yoakum, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Mary Mathis, Kate Gallagher, and Andrea Lopez Cruzado. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. And our theme music is by Trackademics.

If you're already following the show, then just like SLP, I must love you. If not, then I don't. I probably don't. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back on Monday with more. Support for this show is brought to you by Nissan Kicks. It's never too late to try new things, and it's never too late to reinvent yourself. The all-new reimagined Nissan Kicks is the city-sized crossover vehicle that's been completely revamped for urban adventure.

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