MUST-READ QUOTE: With Projects in Theater, Film, TV and Music, Suzan-Lori Parks is a Quadruple Threat

By Tiarra Mukherjee Apr 05, 2019

Suzan-Lori Parks is at the peak of her game. Not only does the Pulizter Prize-winning playwright have a new play, “White Noise,”at the Public Theater in New York, she’s setting up and knocking down pins in every pop culture lane. She’s adapted the script for HBO’s reimagining of “Native Son,” which debuts on Saturday (April 6) and stars Ashton Sanders as Bigger Thomas and Kiki Layne as Bessie. She’s the showrunner for Nat Geo’s latest season of “Genius,” which spotlights Aretha Franklin. And she still finds time to make music fronting her group “Suzan-Lori Parks and the Band.”

Parks recently sat down with Time, for an article published on April 3, to talk about juggling mediums, engaging audiences and how the Black arts world has changed, saying:

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When I started out, there were only a handful of artists of African descent who were considered avant-garde, to my knowledge. The black community at large was not accepting of stuff that was outside the more traditional forms. August Wilson was the king. He’s an awesome writer. But my writing wasn’t like his, and people didn’t know what to do with me. It’s not that I wanted to be avant-garde— that was just the way my words were coming out. Now there are more voices who are breaking form, because they realize the form perhaps doesn’t serve the story of the lives we’re living.


Read the entire interview here.