YouSaid · the spoken record

Suzan-Lori Parks

lines on the record: 37
first: 2024-05-02
most recent: 2024-05-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“With Kara's Wishers produced by Christian Castro Rosell, Kateri Yoakum, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Mary Mathis, Kate Gallagher, and Andrea Lopez Crusado, our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Tracademics. 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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, well, that's what you do when you do it so well Thank you so much, Susan Laurie Parks. What a delight. What a wonderful play. I highly recommend this play.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. I wrote a whole story in the Washington Post about it. You wrote something that really stuck with me in the last page. I mean, throughout, 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 channel?”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's a good enough reason. So, my last question, you're also an author, yes, 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...”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, right. That's exactly right. Yeah. Let me ask two more questions one about the play for the play gear, which debuted in 2022 while you were doing this too. You're also, you're on stage 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, Sulla and the Noise. Did it change your perspective about writing after all Luce is also both the playwright and the lead character?”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But what's your reaction to the backlog? Because they're implying that we're trying to make businesses, universities, and our places more diverse. We're giving up those expectations. What's your answer to that when you think about it? It's now set out loud in a way that it wasn't before.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But DE has been on such a roller coaster in 2020. There was a push for more inclusion after the killing of George Floyd in Black Lives Matters protest, which you talked a lot in your play, plays for the plague year. But now the term DEA higher and diversity hires are being used, yet 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”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I sometimes think my work is 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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Black Movie. And I was like, It really isn't. It's the list of the things it is. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's a, 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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Core Jefferson, who I've known many years. A few weeks before he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screen play 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, and history is expected of you, or are you just called to it? How do you look at it?”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, they can do their homework. I never help them. Once a person, one time when I was a kid, 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?”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I always say that when 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. No idea what that conservative gay man over there thinks in any way. And usually it's bad things for me.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 Aminatuso had a question for you.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Lincoln and Booth are very different from Sally and Tom, Luc and Mike. Luc 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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100% Be back in a minute. 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. 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 Cheetle. 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. 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 the job playing Abraham Lincoln, who tours shoot at. Once again, you're using the format of play acting to make your point, correct?”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. That's right. But sounds like him. Sounds like something he'd say. I just was listening to him talking to Tony Morrison that it had some of that in it. It was that topic, actually.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a line. Also, American flabbiness of memory. Your mentor speaks to you from the Green Via U. So talk about the flabby muscle. Yeah, that was a”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of bullshit. It's like, hey, Well, in that regard, in another recent play of yours, plays for the plague gear called The Play for James Baldwin, who was the 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,”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 fearmongering with the idea that white kids are being taught, that being white is bad, Rhonda Santis 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, America's current rewriting of history in the forefront of your mind. But if you started it a decade ago,”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go ahead. Sorry. Right. Although you do, you don't use 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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Jessie 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 president, 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?”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is downstairs. Yeah, I've done it many times. And also, a lot has changed in the storytelling there. It used to be Mr. Jefferson and very, you know, laudatory. And now, and it's been controversial too, but it's very much focused on.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. So talk about that because, you know, one of the things about the relationship between Sally Hemmings 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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was going to say the main character Louis is a playwright and an actor. She's black. She's in a romantic relationship with a white guy who she feels dependent on to raise money for the play's production. She's also playing Sally Hemmings while he plays The Man Who Owns or 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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The play's about writing a play called The Pursuit of Happiness, which had been previously named Eplurvis Unum out of many one. Explain this 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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 I'm the one who did link. In booths, so I thought Sally and Tom, Lincoln and Booth, Sally and Tom, wouldn't that be fun? But why? Had you, I mean, it's obviously the story has been around a lot, but why this story? Right. I love patterns.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very progressive theater troupe called, Ironically Good Company. They're preparing to put on a play. I don't think it's ironic. 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 Hemmings, 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 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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Susan Lori Parks, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Kara. 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, so 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. Right. Yeah. But let's talk first about your latest play, Sally and Tom. It first premiered in Minneapolis at the Guthrie Cedar, but now it's showing at the public theater in New York. I loved it. I thought it was so, it was 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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our question this week comes from Aminatuso, a writer and co founder of Tech Lady Mafia. She was also the co-host of the podcast, Call Your Girlfriend, and she's a friend of mine. Be back with all that after a quick break.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 US president Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, 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 US 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.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. Today my guest is playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and musician Susan Lori Parks, or SLP, as she sometimes called. Parks is one of those rare multi-talents. In thousands two she became the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in drama for her play Top Dog Underdog. The 2022 revival of that play won her a Tony. 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 play gears, in which she also starred in twenty twenty three. She's the author of a novel titled Getting Mother's Body. She's a screenwriter for the Biopic The United States vs. Billy Holliday Among Others and has written for television, and she also plays and sings in a band, Sulla and the Joyce.”
2024-05-02 · On with Kara Swisher · Wrestling with America’s (Racist) History with Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT