Andy Drachenberg – What about The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess captivated you as something you wanted to work on?
Suzan-Lori Parks – I was at home one day, minding my own business, and Diane Paulus e-mailed me asking if I was available to talk, not really knowing what the conversation was going to be. She called me up and said “I’m doing a revival of Porgy and Bess. Do you want to help with the book?” I said “How many writers are you talking with?” She said “Only you.” So I said “Ok. I’m in. I’ll do it.” Like that.
There’s a novel Porgy, there’s a play called Porgy, and, of course, the brilliant opera. I had never had any experience with them. Diane sent me the libretto and the score, and I sat in my apartment, cranked it up, followed along with the book, and fell in love with it. I thought the music was so beautiful, sublime, and brilliant. I thought “I’m so glad I’m already committed to this project!”
AD– In an earlier interview you voiced excitement about speaking to a contemporary audience with this production. Why does the contemporary audience need The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess?
SLP – A lot of people have heard of Porgy and Bess but haven’t had any firsthand experience with it. Maybe they’ve seen a bit of the movie or heard of it. And the people who say they know Porgy and Bess know the music but they don’t know the story. It’s kind of amazing… some people who have seen it, some people who have even been in it, aren’t really clear on the story. But everybody knows “Summertime!” How can this be?
My whole career so far has been about reaching back and pulling forward. This is right up my alley. Wow! I get to go back and pull something that’s a classic and bring it to audiences of today. To me, Porgy and Bess is a love story. It’s a love story. It’s about Porgy and Bess. Porgy and Bess. There’s an “and” in the title. I always thought the Porgy and Bess aspect of this wonderful show was never fully realized. All the songs are going to sound pretty much like they did in the original. “Summertime” is going to sound like “Summertime,” but we are really allowing these people, Porgy and Bess especially, to tell their stories. That’s what’s really important about this.
AD– Tell us about the world that Porgy and Bess live in. What is Catfish Row? Who are these people, and the times they live in?
SLP – We’re choosing to set it in 1940. Diane has reminded us that every time the show would be performed, they’d say ‘the present.’ When it was initially performed, that would mean 1920-something, then 1930-something, then 1940-something. We decided to keep it in 1940. The music isn’t contemporary hip-hop or contemporary jazz music. It’s more specific to what it was back in the day.
1940s Catfish Row was a coastal community, an African-American community where some were more educated than others. Some were more closed-minded than others, and some were very open and very accepting. It’s a neighborhood. Catfish Row is a place where people are very supportive of each other, very protective of each other. It’s not quick to include outsiders, which is one of the cruxes of our production of Porgy and Bess. The community is a real driving force in the show.
AD– What has that collaboration been like in this production?
SLP – I’m collaborating with Diedre Murray. Diedre Murray is collaborating with Suzan-Lori Parks. Suzan-Lori Parks and Diedre Murray are collaborating with George and Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. We’re reaching back. I always felt that we were holding hands, dancing in a circle like one of those Matisse paintings, doing that naked dance – well, maybe not naked. But we were all doing dance, making it together.
Working with Diedre was easy, because right away we understood that the music has a dramatic structure and the storyline has a musical structure. A lot of times our conversations were about “you can’t cut that, because that is the theme for that!” She’d say the same thing about the music. We’d do work on our own, and then we’d come together and work in windowless rooms for hours and hours and hours. I’d say “we need this in there.” And Diedre would say “musically, it’s not going to make any sense.” It was cool. A real joy!
AD– How do you incorporate your voice into such a classic production?
SLP – When I work on things, I don’t have a desire to put my thumbprints on anything. I want the story to be told in the best way possible. It’s not so important to put my voice on it.
AD – Do you have a message for newcomers and/or fans?
SLP – Come ready to fall in love with it. It’s a beautiful love story. It’s a story about strong people who have strong opinions, strong passions. I get so excited and moved thinking about it. It’s a story about love, and with love you have to decide to reincarnate yourself in your own lifetime. That’s what these characters do. They decide to make themselves anew, because love has moved them toward that. It moves everybody to grow.
SUZAN-LORI PARKS is one of the most exciting and acclaimed playwrights in American drama today. She 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 the Broadway hit Topdog/Underdog. Other plays include In the Blood(2000 Pulitzer Prize finalist), Venus (1996 Obie Award), The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Fucking A, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (1990 Obie Award for Best New American Play), and The America Play (produced at the A.R.T. in 1994). Her Ray Charles musical, Unchain My Heart is scheduled to premiere on Broadway in the spring of 2011. Her screenplays include Girl 6for Spike Lee and her adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God for ABC’s “Oprah Winfrey Presents”. In 2007 her project 365 Plays/365 Days was produced in over 700 theaters worldwide, creating one of the largest grassroots collaborations in theater history. Her first novel, Getting Mother’s Body, was published by Random House in 2003. She is a MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient, and has been awarded grants from numerous organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Foundation Grant. She has received a Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Award and a CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts (Drama). Suzan-Lori Parks is an alumnae of New Dramatists and her work is the subject of the PBS Film The Topdog Diaries.