S19-20, Repisode 5: In Conversation with Suzan-Lori Parks - a podcast by Berkeley Rep

In this Repisode we talk with Suzan-Lori Parks, the playwright of WHITE NOISE, about play’s four contrasting perspectives, and how it anchors difficult topics in love and laughter.

Suzan-Lori Parks was named one of time magazine’s “100 Innovators for the Next New Wave,” and is the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play Topdog/Underdog. She is a MacArthur “Genius Grant” prize recipient. Broadway credits include the Tony Award-winning Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. Other plays include In the Blood (Pulitzer Prize finalist) and, more recently, Father Comes Home from the Wars (parts 1,2&3)(Pulitzer Prize finalist). Parks has authored a novel: Getting Mother’s Body. Her screenplays include Girl6 (directed by Spike Lee), Their Eyes Were Watching God (produced by Oprah Winfrey), Anemone Me, and an adaptation of Native Son. New work includes The United States vs Billie Holiday, a stage-musical adaptation of the film The Harder They Come, and she’s currently the show-runner for genius: Aretha Franklin for National Geographic. Parks is now The Public Theater’s Master Writer Chair. She also writes songs and fronts her band: Suzan-Lori Parks & The Band.

WHITE NOISE runs September 26–November 10 and tickets are available at berkeleyrep.org.

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Music credit to Peter Yonka.

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