 Where you all just be quiet as you're nothing to say. Are you going to wait there? I'll introduce you in then. I think that's good. Okay. Do you need the big dress? For the big entrance? Okay. Good afternoon. I know. I'll try to lower my voice so the mic works since we're using the mic although. Good afternoon. My name is Amelia Ben-Susan. I'm the chair of the performing arts department here at Emerson College. And whether you're here with us in the glorious couple of Majestic Theater or you are watching us via... Let me see if I can get the sentence right. I have to read my notes on this because you're watching via live streaming on New Play TV. Welcome to everybody. Yes, right. Emerson and the Department of Performing Arts are thrilled that together we can host this event thanks to the generosity of Honey Waldman. Honey Waldman gave us this extraordinary gift of endowing a residency, a guest residency for an artist. And thanks to that gift, we get to share with you one of the most creative voices in this country today. When Honey Waldman founded this residency, she asked that her gift be used to bring in an artist to help transform this community, students, faculty, staff, all of us here at Emerson. She wanted to enliven and transform the students' experience of theater and help all of us see ourselves in our work in a new light. I can think of no better recipient for Honey Waldman's gift than this year's guest. Named one of time, Magazine's 100 Innovators for the Next New Wave. And although I think that was ten years ago, she's still one of the hottest innovators. The winner of a Pulitzer, a MacArthur Genius Award, several obis and many other awards. Her numerous plays include Father Comes Home from the Wars, the Book of Grace, Top Dog and the Dog, The Blood, Venus, the Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Fucking A, and Perceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom. And one of my favorites, the America Play. In 2007, her 365 plays, 365 Days, was produced in over 700 theaters worldwide, creating one of the largest grassroots collaborations in theater history, of which performing arts at Emerson was one of the contributing organizations. Currently, her adaptation of The Gershwin Sporting Invest is continuing its extraordinarily successful Broadway run. I could go on. I recommend you read more about Susan Laurie, if you don't already, know a lot. I'm sensing a lot of you do and have experience with her work. So I'm going to add really why I think it's extraordinarily special that she's here. Beyond her accomplishments, which are indeed significant, I think what she's bringing to our community and what she brings to all who encounter her and her work is an energy of possibility, of presence, of creativity and voice. In her performance slash installation slash teaching slash act of almost, I would say, public meditation, which she terms watch me work, which she did this afternoon in our community, I think she's helped more writers than we know, more artists than we can imagine. And all of us start paying attention to our own voices. The me in watch me work, I think, becomes you. And when you watch her work, you can then transform it into your own voice and vision. And as she told our students today, go and do it. What are you waiting for? So what are we waiting for? It's my great honor to introduce you to this year's Waldman chair in the performing arts, Susan Laurie Parks. We have known each other for many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many years. We were artists together in downtown Brooklyn back when downtown Brooklyn was wild. We had to hack through the underbrush to go to the theater and the critics, you know, it's like that. But then we would hang out in downtown Brooklyn and make theater. That was a while ago, and here we are both today at Emerson. Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm happy to be the Waldman lecturer, visiting in person. We did watch me work this afternoon. Thanks for giving us a shout out. We were then, as we are now, live-streaming on new play TV. And it's so exciting to be live. It's really good. And for that occasion, I have for you, as I told folks, I told Rebecca Frank, and all the people who put this together, it's been really fun so far, and I have some events to do tomorrow also. But I told them that I would be giving you this evening a million suggestions, a million suggestions. First, we're going to, I'm going to do some talking, and then we're going to do some Q&A, if you have any questions, we'll all work to answer them. But I'm going to be giving you a million suggestions in the course of about 40 minutes or so. And that's, yeah, that's going to mean that I'm going to have to make some sounds, some very interesting sounds. We've worn the sound department, the sound guys, the sound people already. So when I, you're going to hear something like this, when you hear something like this, you might, if you're tender, you might want to cover your ears. Blah, blew it out, it's gone, oh you, you don't have to like, pop it down. When you hear a sound like that, know that that's a suggestion, or many suggestions, whizzing by you at the speed of sound. Many suggestions will whizz by you just like that. Other suggestions will be told to you like this, at the speed of speech. All of the suggestions you will be able to incorporate into your daily life, whether you're an artist or don't consider yourself an artist, you'll be able to incorporate the suggestions into your daily life. Also throughout the evening I'll be doing, I gesture a lot, I've been told I gesture a lot, so I'm going to just tell you what I'm thinking when I'm doing these funny things. This means the text, the text, as it was on the page. This means the sidebar or the access road, so I'll be doing that at the margin, you know, just kind of a thought, maybe that goes off to a tangent. This, when I do this, it means the footnote, you know, put a footnote down the bottom of the page. When I do this, I usually mean the spirit, the higher power, the big field of energy, if you will, a big energy source comes from over there. If you want to talk to me during the Q&A about my tattoos, we can talk about those. This means the past, you know what I say, in the past, Amelia and I used to hang out in Brooklyn, like that. Okay, and then this is the way back past, like when I was in high school, which I will be referring to shortly, so you have all those, so when I start moving my hands around, you got it. Okay, maybe not again, you got it. Okay, we're ready to go. So in 2002, I won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and ever since then, people have been asking me this question, what's it like to be the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in drama? I say, ah man, it's great. It's really, really great, and it's also very humbling, because as you know that saying, we stand on the shoulders of giants, and it's very clear to me that I'm up here today, very much in part, because there have been some awesome, awesome, awesome great great writers who have hacked the path, you know, and built that road so that I can just kind of walk down that road. So I always want to start the speech, if you will, to show by giving thanks to the people who've come before, people who were back there, and also somehow magically in front of me, whose footsteps I follow, even though they remained a long time ago, and we all have those kinds of people in our past. We talk today, and watch me work about the folks everyone's got behind them, you know, like your own private bench, if you're in a baseball or, you know, one of the sports, like the bench, your deep bench, your people there who are rooting for you, and we always want to acknowledge those people and give thanks to them. Another question people ask me is, when did I start writing? When did you start writing? When did you start writing? And I tell them, as far as I know, I started writing in the fourth grade, in the fourth, somewhere like this. I have a son, he's this tall, he's a year and a half, so in the fourth grade, he'll be like this, I guess. But I started writing in the fourth grade, and just so you know, one can begin at any age to do the thing that you really, really, really want to do. There's a great writer, D.H. Lawrence, many of you might have heard of him, he's a great awesome writer, lots and lots of great novels, and then started painting, painting at the age of 40, and he wondered, he said, he wrote, what am I doing bursting into paint? I am a writer, I ought to stick to ink. I have found my medium of expression, so why do I want to try another? And he said, well, I had to get to age 40 before I got the courage to try. And then it became an orgy, painting pictures. So this kind of ballsy writer had to become 40 before he had the courage to try doing something new. I have a good friend who told me that her father was a businessman, retired at age 60, and started writing novels. And now he's 81, and he's got like five published novels. And I was like, oh my God, I have to tell people that, because this is an example, you can start at any time, at any time. If you feel like starting right now, if you've been harboring this desire, you know, this is a sign for more, which I do. You're supposed to teach children sign language before they can talk. So if I start doing this, know that I've been talking to an 18-month-old person. So if you had the desire to do something more with your life, and you get that desire right now, and you feel like, now is my time, right now, right now, right now, begin now. Because what you're going to begin right now for yourself, especially if you've been putting it all for a long time, is more important than anything that I'm going to say to you. As God says, you know, be the change you want to be, you want to see in the world, and if you feel like starting that, and if that change starts happening for you right now, then by all means begin. But I started writing in the fourth grade. Also, one more note about doing something. A lot of you are very accomplished people, whether you're in school or professors and everything. It's never a good time to sit on your laurels. I always think that, right? Never a good time to sit on your laurels. I have in my contract, my speaking contract. By the way, this is an awesome circle of light. I just want to give thanks to you. It looks like the Ring of Fire, for those of you who know that song. But I have in my contract that I'll have a music stand, a boom mic, and a stool on which I will not sit. Because I was sitting, I quite was like resting on your laurel, so I would want to give you this speech by like sitting down like this. So, it's always a good time that I start doing your thing. I started doing my thing in the fourth grade. My father was in the Army. He was away in the war. He comes home and decides with my mom that they were going to go with their American dream and their American dream had a sound track. And the sound track went something like Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na. The sound of their children practicing scales on the piano. So, they went out and they bought a piano. A baby grand piano, and they put it in the living room living room and they sat there waiting to hear that sound. We practiced piano. We had a wonderful piano teacher, several wonderful piano teachers, but mostly we would play outside and this was in the past when children played outside. Now I don't really see children play outside but we would, my mom, so my mom would come looking for us and we'd be either, I'd be one of two places outside, playing, running around, playing in the yard or whatever. Or one day she found me, she walked, she said, under the piano sitting there with the dog, the family dog, and she said, what are you doing? And I had my notebook out and a pencil and I said, I'm writing my novel. There I was in the fourth grade writing my novel. I had read that point to novels and a little bit of another novel. I'd read Harriet the Spy, which is a great novel. I'd read Hotel for Dogs, which is another great novel, not as well known as Harriet the Spy. And I'd read at Don Quixote. My parents had, you know, the illustrated world classics up on the bookshelf and I pulled one of them down at random and it was Don Quixote and it was illustrated. So what I did was I just went through and I read the captions under the pictures. So I had two and an ish novel, right, under my little fourth grade belt but I felt like it was a good time for me to start writing my own novel, which was a totally far out idea, which brings us to suggestion number one. Suggestion number one. Entertain all your far out ideas. Entertain all your far out ideas. Now, what does that mean? When you get a far out idea, you're entertaining, you invite it into your home, you know, sit it down at your table, give it something delicious to eat or drink, whether you're drinking water or wine or a maker's mark or a Pepsi product. You guys like Pepsi products here. Let it take root in your life and it will bloom beautifully. You know, you entertain all your far out ideas, let it take root in your life and it will bloom beautifully. And what's an example of a far out idea? 365 days, 365 plays, which Emerson was a part of, a beautiful part of. I was hanging out one day and I said, I'm gonna write a play a day. I'm gonna call it 365 days, 365 plays. And I started writing that very day and then I had a friend of mine, Bonnie Metzger, who's a wonderful, wonderful producer. And she said, Hey, what are you gonna do now that you've written them a year later? I wrote them. We went and did them all over the world. We did them all over for fun. Right? So that's an example of a far out idea. So I started writing in the fourth grade and then what did I do? What did I do? Just because obviously I'm standing up here doesn't mean that it was easy, right? Just because, you know, someone has achieved some level of success doesn't mean the road was easy. Often the road to success is full of lumps and bumps, which is always good to remember. I started writing and I kept at it. I kept that writing and I was fortunate enough to get into AP English in high school, which is, they say that they still have AP English. If they ask a place where English people are nodding, so it's familiar like good English or something. So I don't know, right? Who knows? I was fortunate enough to get into AP English. And what, this is a long time ago, you understand, when I was in high school. And because I just have to tell you, those of you who are, like, when you were watching, when were you born? What year? 1994. Wow, amazing. So no, no, it's cool. I was cool when I was a great year. 1994, so, but I was born at a time, and I was in high school at a time when, like, when you said the word computer, right? That contrapped the image of, you know, a big thing like a refrigerator or bigger, actually, I think. I mean, no one, I've never seen a computer. You'd heard about them on TV. But you fed them cards, like that. So nobody had a personal computer. That was like, I don't know, nobody had one. I don't think they had been invented yet. And what I'm getting to is that we didn't have PCs, personal computers. We also did not have spell check. This is long time ago. And teachers, at least my teacher, my AP English teacher, used spelling to measure your intelligence, right? That was a common practice back then. So every Monday in AP English, we would get a list of words. And every Friday, of course, you take the list away. And we have to surrender the list, I guess. That's how it worked. And we'd have to spell the words. She'd call out the words, and we'd have to spell them. And by that, she'd measure how smart we were, you know. And yeah, so you've heard of, like, those time periods like AD and BC. And this is like BSC before spell check. This was a horrible time in my life. And Friday started with the letter F for a reason. Because every Friday without fail, I fail that test. Every, no matter how hard I studied from Monday to Thursday night, you know, at night, Friday would come and I'd fail the test. It has something to do with English language, but back there, I'm not blaming the English language, I'm just saying it's hard. Also, they would say in those days, sound it out, sound it out, sound it out. It doesn't work in English, sound it out. It does not work in English, but anyway. Friday went on, that was still a great little Susan or Park Scott. So what happened at the end of the school year, I'd managed to get into Malmollio College. At the end of the school year, you're invited into the teacher's office for what I would call a debriefing, you know, she's sending you out to the world. And she says, well, Ms. Parks, that's really, really wonderful that you got into, oh, I'm talking like this because she hadn't overbite. So she talked kind of funny. So she said, you've got into Malmollio College, that's really wonderful. What do you plan to do to study in Malmollio College? And I said, well, I was shy. I'm gonna be a, well, I'm gonna study English. You know, I didn't want to say I want to be a writer, I just I'm gonna study English, you know, English literature. She says, well, English literature. And then maybe I did blurt out, well, maybe I'll be a writer. I couldn't help, you know, so excited. You know, I wanted some kind of effort, you know, confirmation from her, you know. And she said, well, be a writer, study English literature. That's very interesting. She opens her grade book. You've been there, haven't you? She finds her name. She reads it across. Maybe my heart had been a balloon, right, which shrinks like this. And she says, Ms. Parks, I don't think you should be a writer because you're not a very good speller. And I said, well, yes, ma'am. I totally hear you on that one. I was brought up to say yes, ma'am, no ma'am, yes, sir, no, sir, to folks. And I also had in my back pocket a plan B. I was really, really, really good in science. I was really good in physics. So I thought I'd be the first black woman in space. That was my backup plan. Dr. Ida B. Jimson actually was the first black woman in space, but we're so lucky. But what happened was, you know, so I had his back up in grade, I'll just be a scientist, you know, I got it covered. And I went to Mount Hollywood College and I had to take chemistry classes, you know, that's like the basic, you know, you have to go and the first thing you have to take if you're going to be a science major is chemistry classes. So we wore these white lab coats and the gloves, you know, goggles and a whole pit, right? And we're in the lab and we're, we have these, you know, test tubes and whatnot and beakers and you're pouring liquids from one thing to another. And I think I'm dying. This is what it's like to grow up and die. You've been there, you know, it's like, right. So, I mean, not to dischemistry or anything, chemistry, biochemistry, everybody's cool, but it wasn't my thing. There I was dying. They forced us to take this core curriculum, right? They forced you. So, you know, they forced you to take an English class. We're going to torture the science majors. I forced them into English classes. So I was a science major. They forced me to take an English class. We read, among other things, that's first semester, we read Virginia Woolf's to the lighthouse. Has anybody read to the lighthouse? Oh, you've read to the lighthouse? Can you explain it to me? Exactly. It's five pages of just the inner dialogue of the characters. It's like very, very monologue aspect now. Oh, that's, that's well done. I've never understood it until it's very popular. Probably born in 1994 also. You could have written my paper, but wow, that was so cool. Because I totally didn't get it. There was a lot of, you know, Virginia Woolf. It's like, will it, will it be fine and will it be fine, right? And, and, and should we go to the lighthouse and shouldn't we? And, and the main character, she like dies in some kind of parenthem, like a little bit, you know, which is like heartbreaking, you know, but Mrs. Ramsey was dead or something. Oh my God. And in the end, they go to the lighthouse and they get socks, right? Somebody get some socks for the lighthouse keepers boy. Great. No, by now, but I understand like the monologue, this is fantastic. I'm gonna write that down. I remember. But when I was in college and we read the novel for the, and I read the novel for the first time, I didn't get it like that. I totally didn't understand it. I didn't write a good paper on it, you know, but I fell in love with it just the same. I totally fell in love with this novel. It was like a beautiful, beautiful poem. And the mystery of it was like, wow. You know, I know there is mystery in chemistry also, but it doesn't sing to me like the mystery in literature. And the mystery in literature was totally, totally singing to me in Virginia Woolf's novel. And you know how Heliotropism, you know, how flowers go, nah. That's what happened to me. I went, nah, it turned me back to you. No, but it's true. You see, you know, you know nature, don't you guys live up here? Like that all of a sudden when you hear something or see something that reminds you of who you are, it helps you remember yourself, literally putting your members, your body back together. And Virginia Woolf definitely helped me remember my me. There's this quote, this guy wrote this book, Stephen Pressville called The War of Art. And he says, we cannot be anything we want. Our task is to discover who it is that we are supposed to be and work towards fulfilling our destiny. So Virginia Woolf's to the Lighthouse helped me remember myself and her work helped me, like I said, rehear my me. So it brings us to suggestion number two. Now sometimes, it's very important, sometimes somebody who you really respect, who really wants you to do well, who really likes you, will give you some advice where they are. So you really respect them, and they really like you, and they give you some advice and here it comes. That will not jive with what's going on inside you. And when that happens, you say, no, thank you. All right, so again, you really respect them, they really like you, they want you to do well. And their advice, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you say, no, thank you. Okay, there's a wonderful yoga teacher, Adil Pakibala, who says, you don't want to spend enormous amounts of energy climbing the ladder to success only to realize that you've propped the ladder against the wrong wall. So yeah, so I'm talking about spending some time listening in and listening to your own guts and entertaining those, those far out ideas, tuning into your own guts. Here, your ears. Suggestion number one, two, one, eight. Practice listening. I didn't say that we're going to be in the AmeriCorps. Practice listening. I mentioned this because my whole writing process pretty much, pretty much everything I've written comes from listening in a constant and steady listening to my own guts. William Faulkner, the famous writer, William Faulkner says, I listen to the voices and I'm in total agreement with that. People are always asking me, what are your tricks for coming up with ideas? I just like listen, I listen to the world very much. And I also listen in, I listen in, I listen in to what, you know, I entertain these far out ideas constantly, constantly. So we go back to Mount Holyoke College, there I was, I followed back in love with literature. I fled the chemistry lab. I decided that I wanted to be a writer. I didn't know any writers, there were no writers in my family, right? So I was like, there's no money in writing that I could see, you know, the budget cuts those days too, and all the same things, same kinds of things that you might be experiencing today as you look out past your graduation. But I thought, no, you know, at this time, I'm definitely going to become a writer. I don't know how I'm going to do it. But I know that it doesn't involve a lot of writing. So I'm going to write, you know, every day, every day, pretty much as best I can, I made that commitment. Okay, and after many, many, many years of writing, I still make and remake the commitment to being a writer. Okay, and if you are anything, whether you're a writer, or painter, or a mom, or a dad, or a professor, or milk man, or whatever, you have to get up in the morning and make the commitment to do your thing, right? Just because you've been doing a long time, there is no cruise control, especially in the arts, you know, or in parenting, for that matter, there's no cruise control, right? You don't coast. Okay. And one thing that happens, one of the many things that happens when you make that commitment, all sorts of wonderful things start to come into play. You might not notice some of them might be really small, but all sorts of wonderful things are coming into play for you. What happened for me is I didn't have to take any more chemistry classes, so that was automatic. Yay. Right? And then what happened was I got to spend time reading literature, which I loved. And I got to spend time working on my own writing, which was a joy to me. It wasn't easy, but it was it was kind of fun. It was fun. I listened to those writerly voices, you know, the sounds of inspiration, things like that. And then what happened a couple of years after that, we heard that James Baldwin, the famous writer James Baldwin was coming to town. And Mount Holyoke, as you know, probably because you guys live up here, it's in the Pioneer Valley. And there are the five colleges. He was going to teach at Hampshire College. And we could take classes as students around Holyoke College, we could apply to get in that class. So of course, everybody in the whole valley probably applied. The stack of applications we saw them later was like way up here. Everyone sent in a short story or something to try to get into that class. They were only accepted 15 people, three from each college, right? And all we all want to probably sit there. Please, please, please, please, pick me, pick me, pick me. Somehow, through the grace of, you know, the higher power I got into this class, there were 15 of us in the class, as I said, we sat around one of those library tables, right, one of those big tables. And we all sat there and there were some undergrads and some grads that kind of mixed it up with grad students and undergraduates. And we all sat in that first day. I remember I think it was a Monday or something. Before you were born. 12 years before you were born. We were sitting at the library table, waiting for him. I had seen pictures of him because my parents, when they found out I want to be a writer, they gave me some, you know, they gave me one of his books, couple of his books, The Fire Next Time. There was this picture on the back. Oh, I couldn't wait. We all looked at the door, waiting for him. I imagined, of course, he was going to be huge, a big man coming through the door. He wouldn't even fit to the door. He was so amazing, I thought. So a couple of minutes after, I think it was like three o'clock, a couple of minutes after three, he comes in. He is a small man, man, about my height. The fine, fine bone, very fine bone. He has a head that looks like an alien. And he has eyes that can see through your best bullshit. And he sits the head of the table and in class with James Baldwin begins. He says he had never taught creative writing before. So we were so fortunate to receive the first fruits of James Baldwin's wisdom on the subject for which he was, you know, he was just known the world over as such, such, such a great writer. So it was my turn to read and we were, you know, we got to read about it every other week, every three weeks, something like that. Probably the same thing here. And I would stand up, I hold my text, I make voices for the characters and do all these kinds of things and gesture a lot in office. No one else was doing that. I got needed a little something. My short story, they need a little something. And after a couple of times doing this, he called me aside after class, and he said, Miss Parks, have you ever thought about writing for the theater? I was like, shit. The theater, the theater, there was a theater, I mean, there, I didn't see. It brings us to suggestion number three, because what happened right after that, after I kind of got over that, I had to take the five college bus home, and I started writing my very first play, which does bring us to suggestion number three, which is sometimes it looks a lot like suggestion number two, sometimes someone you have a lot of respect for really wants you to do well. We'll give you some advice and that does join with what's going on inside you. And that happens. You take their advice. Okay, so you see the difference feels right. So you take their advice, right? How do you know again, how do you know the difference between good advice and bad advice by listening in by listening in by listening in your ears. It's cold in flu season. Suggest number one, two, three, four, your breath is your divine voice, take some time every day to listen to it, even if it's just for three minutes a day. I hope somebody out there has a meditation practice. Yes, maybe. So two people, maybe a few more. Great, great. Fantastic. That's more last week, I spoke at Duke University and there weren't as many people. So just so you know, your hand in them. Fantastic. There's a word and I think I'm using this word correctly. There's a word called neuroplasticity, which basically to me means that you can regroup your brain, you know, like a piece of vinyl, you know, like a record, you know, but you do you have a meditation practice and those of you who don't have one that you'd like to try to sit, maybe you can sit on the floor, you sit in a chair, you set a little timer for yourself and you know, 10 minutes or five minutes or three minutes, if that's all you can manage, you sit there and you breathe and you just breathe and you are you become aware of the patterns of your mind. And what you learn to do is you learn to stay with yourself. Oh, so this is what I'm really like. Oh, that's okay. It's basically what it is. Okay. And what you learn to do is any patterns to regroup your brain, any patterns that like are not working for you, you can become aware of them and awareness through awareness, you can, you know, alter your behavior if it's not working for you and accept the things that, you know, of course, you can't do anything about. But so that's neuroplasticity and listening in and a meditation practice. So what James Baldwin taught me, James Baldwin, of course, he steered me toward playwriting. He also taught me how to conduct myself in the presence of the spirit, how to conduct myself in the presence of the spirit. And what does that mean? Again, these foreign ideas, you are welcoming to the spirit, you entertain your foreign ideas, you treat the spirit as an honored guest, right? You are respectful, as you would be in the presence of a great and powerful volcano, because the spirit is at least that and you are attentive to the spirit as you would be attentive to a lover, how to conduct yourself in the presence of the spirit, how to value your life, basically taught me how to value my life and my art too. So fast for a really fast. I graduated from college, moved to London to hang out, moved to New York, I didn't go to grad school, I kept thinking I would go, but I kept doing something else instead. When I moved to New York, with a degree from Mountain Mother College in English with German literature, I had no, they call marketable skills. And so I had to take a class, series of classes at the Betty Owen Secretarial College. And they taught you to type really fast, to be able to type that fast. And what happened was I could then get jobs, you know, as a temporary word processor. And I would go to work, you know, nine to fives and places like the World Trade Center and Citibank and on Park Avenue and all those fancy places and lawyers offices and things like that. And I would save my money. And then in the evening, still dressed in my, well, because I had one outfit that was considered corporate, you know, which was this killed women back then more killings. He's like, you know, they weren't cutesy kilts. They were kind of dorky kilts. And I wear this and I would go after work, I would go and hang out with my friends who all hung out in the East Village and they all were black. And they all wore, you know, the sunglasses, even in the middle of the day. And they were like berets of something out of a, you know, French movie or something. And they all smoked unfiltered cigarettes and drank absinthe and the whole thing. And so they kind of look at me when I walked in, I don't know what they were all working in fact, cool groovy jobs. But I was working at this bank and they would walk in to hang out with them. And they would look me over and say, Oh, gosh, you know, you're never going to be an artist. Because you're not cool. I would say, okay. So I saved my money. I saved my money. What I did do is I wrote a lot when I went home, right, I would go home to my little apartment and write and write and write and write and I saved some money. I wrote a little play. I got enough money to hire an actor, two actors and a director. And I was like, I want to do this place somewhere. There was a place in the East Village called the gas station, which had been back in the day, a gas station. And it's cool, right? So they taken up the pumps, obviously. And in this room to like a cement floor, there was a little bar and some Christmas lights, the only lights in the place and a green couch on which all kinds of things happened. And we would go and hang out there late at night, me and my cool artist friends, we would go and hang out and we would watch the lights go bling bling bling bling. And one night I said, Hey, guys, you want to go out of that and they were like, actually, no, we've never done that. But let's do a play here. We'll go out and buy the chairs. And you go out and buy the lights. And we'll put on your show. Because I've written this play, I had money to hire folks and pay people. So I was like, great. So I went to the hardware store and bought some silver clip on lights and two or three long yellow industrial strength extension cords. And we hired the actors, we had the rehearsal, we made those flyers. They passed them all around the neighborhood. It had a run of my struggle betting on the Dust Commander had a run for three days, a three day run, which was standard for an off off off off off off Broadway playing. We were so far off Broadway, may as well have been in another country and we probably were three people, three or four people came, my mom, my dad, my sister and the homeless man who lived outside. Because it was warm because it was like October, you know, and so he came in and watched the show bewildered as I'm sure my parents were bewildered. Because it was, you know, off off off off Broadway, theater, it's cool, it's weird, it's strange, it probably made no sense to them. I sat during the show, I sat behind a screen. And I was in charge of the lights. And I held those extension cords. And lights up was this and lights down was this. And I did this for the whole show. As the show ran. I thought I had arrived. I really felt like I had arrived. I was a playwright in New York City. I made a little bit of money through my temp job to hire actors. I written a play. I got a venue to produce the play. And there I was so very proud that I had, as my dad said, made my own luck. Suggestion number 7777, my dad would always say this, you make your luck. So the idea is that you're sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. You're out there doing it. And again, I had this theory that if you put some effort into it, the spirit will meet you halfway. You know, the spirit will meet you halfway. So as my dad said, you make your luck. And then of course came wonderful experiences like Bogga downtown because I had put a lot of energy into it. In perceptual mutabilities in the third kingdom won the OB for Best New American Play. More plays came Venus in the Blood, screenplays like Girl 6 for Spike Lee. More plays, Top Dog, Good or Dog, if you want to talk about that during the Q&A. Fucking A, 365 Days, 365 Plays, a novel I wrote called Getting Mother's Body. About being cool, being cool is overrated. And besides, you will miss all the fun. These suggestions are from the old school, from the movement, from the civil rights movement. Suggestion number nine, each one, each one. Suggestion number 12, lift others as you climb. So when you're climbing the ladder to success, make sure you have your hand out to help others in their ascent. Also, suggestion number 63, eyes on the prize. Suggestion number 144, ain't nobody gonna turn me around. Ain't nobody gonna turn me around. One of my favorites, suggestion number 47, this little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. So I wrote Top Dog Underdog in three days. Maybe you've heard that story. I don't trip on that fact. I have this theory that what you trip on will trip you up. So we can talk more about Top Dog Underdog if you want to in the Q&A. The novel Getting Mother's Body, I wrote while we were in rehearsal for Top Dog Underdog. So I've written a couple of drafts. And we got our theater on Broadway, the Ambassador Theater. I do nothing about Broadway theater at the time. I got a call from my agent saying, Hey, kiddo, we're going to talk about Broadway. I said, Yeah, yeah, I know. George said he was directed. Okay. Okay. And he said, I said, the ambassador what? I knew nothing about Broadway theater. The ambassador was a deer. I'm brought with him now. I know. Okay. The fact that I did not know. So we were in rehearsal at the ambassador for Top Dog Underdog to receive both directing Most Death and Jeffrey Wright as Lincoln and Booth. And I've been working on this novel for a couple of years. And something inside me began a far idea. I said, push, push. What does that mean? I said, I knew that I had to get the novel done a readable draft before we open Top Dog Underdog. Just something they told me, get it done now. Don't wait. So we would rehearse all day. And I would go home. I'd been Brooklyn at the time. I would go home and write into the night on this novel. Right as many pages as I could. I finished the novel the day before we open Top Dog Underdog. We open Top Dog Underdog. I finished the novel on a Saturday. We open Top Dog on a Sunday. And on that Monday, they announced the Pulitzer prizes and I won. And the sound was like this. It's really hard to write when you hear that sound. So many eyes upon you. I was so glad that I had finished my novel that I had listened to that inner voice and I finished my novel before that Monday came. It's a very heavy moment. Suggestion number 866. Write a play a day. Write a play a day. Either you can do something crazy like 365 days 365 plays or you can think of what do I want the world to be like? I think I want the world to be like this and you go into your life every day and you are the star of your own play. And that is the action of your play that I'm going to play today. So today my play would be called Visiting Emerson. And we have a special appearance by Ralph Waldo Emerson even though they're not the same. Come on and say something like I'm a god of nature. I'm a weed by the wall. I say like that because I think Graydon said that. Something cool like that. And we have this play. But write a play a day. Make your life a series of beautiful, beautiful, beautiful plays. See what's missing in the world and fill it in. Find that way to fill in some of the action that's missing in the world. Go back a page. Suggestion number 9,260. Smile at your fear that comes from Pima Chodron. The fabulous Buddhist nun. Smile at your fear. You find yourself cringing at something you're afraid of. She suggests that you smile instead. And she suggests that all those beautiful statues. I went to a Cambodian resilient. You see these beautiful statues of these deities smiling. And she wonders if they are smiling in something that was very frightening and terrifying. So smile at your fear. It really can change your mind and your mood. Suggestion 888,888. Practice radical inclusion. Practice radical inclusion. Try to do this as a visual. So most of our inclusion is like this. That's our friends, right? We meet our friends. Do something like this. Radical inclusion is your hand is past your shoulder joint. This is saved for people who are not like you. It's a spiritual exercise to see yourself in the other. It's very hard to do. Very, very hard to do. What you could do if you have a television or a computer. You can practice it with an image online. You can dial up, you know, you can look up somebody you don't like. Who knows? We won't mention any names. But you can just see parts of yourself in them and parts of them in you. Because that's often, you know that saying. That's often what we don't like about somebody. What we really, really, really, really don't like about somebody. It's a part of ourselves that we're trying really hard to hide. So it's just a funnel in the spiritual exercise. And then you can maybe turn it off. But you know, it's a good spiritual exercise. Suggestion number 99. When you get an award, regardless of the specifics of the award, know that you've been called upon to contribute to the amount of kindness and compassion in the world. Lots of people when they get an award, you see them looking at the bottom, you know, like this is, because they think that the fine print says, but now it gives, this is my license to be an asshole. And you see them using their award to, to beat other people or to make other people feel bad, you know, badly. But actually your award, the fine fine print, is that you've been called upon to increase the amount of kindness and compassion in the world. For those of us who are prized and all of us here are prized. If you've made it this far, you're prized. No doubt in my mind. If you've made it this far, you are prized. And for those of us who are prized, know that we have been called upon to increase the kindness and compassion in the world. The more you got, the more you got to give, right? The more all that you are, the more all that you have to give and to share. Suggestion number 12,293. You are an ambassador of your race. That's an old school concept that we can bring forward way back in the day. My parents, we were living in places like Germany, where they hadn't seen actually in the flesh a lot of black people, right? My parents would say, you're an ambassador of your race because they would go, ah, who come on down? And you go, whoa, there is that. Oh, you're first black person that you've ever seen. You're an ambassador of your race. And so we bring that idea forward and we should all know that we are and each of us an ambassador of the human race, right? You're all representing. So what do you bring me? What do you bring into the table? You know, you're, when I meet you, it's the first time I have met you. What do you bring to the table? How are you informing my opinion of your world and where you're coming from? Suggestion number 555,291. Always realize the value of kindness. Always realize the value of kindness. Here's the suggestion number 1, William, which is enjoy the trip. Enjoy the trip. Enjoy the trip. So now I'll take your questions if you have any. Thank you. Any questions? I'll repeat them into the microphone so we can hear them. Yes? This is like kind of a satisfied my curiosity kind of thing. A satisfied my curiosity kind of thing. When you, when you wrote that play in three days, did you edit along the way or after? Yes, when I wrote a talk about going back in three days, did I edit along the way or did I go what? Yeah, your words. Yes, I went later. Yes, yes, yes. It does, it does speed. Speed is key. Speed is key. I tell my writing students, I teach at NYU, and I tell my writing students that there are two kinds of bravery. We need artists, the bravery of writing and a bravery of rebinding. Two kinds of courage, actually. So the first courage is to get it down, right? And the second courage is to edit skillfully and without mercy. Yeah, definitely. I divide, tend to divide the two. I feel like when you mix the two, you know, it makes it more difficult. Yes, right there. The story behind my tattoos. It's the same phrase three times, my tattoos, and part of my Sanskrit pronunciation is lousy, but I'm going to say it anyway. It says Ishvara Pranudanaya Vah, which is from the yoga sutras. It's sutra number one, two, three, which I think is kind of funny. And it's where a watch should be. It's three times small, medium, and large. I was going to get extra large maybe next week. And it means basically the tough translation of Ishvara Pranudanaya Vah is submit your will to the will of God. The gentle translation is go with the flow. So when I say, what's happened is, it's time to go with the flow. Okay, so it's a joke. It's just like a little thing that keeps me laughing. I got it done in LA. I was thinking I'd better get, you know, one more. Really big letters, go with the flow. Also entertain yourself, you know, life and art constantly. Yes, to the lighthouse. Yay. Oh yes, yes. You're so smart. All I know is that I've been playing music as a sidebar, sidecar for a long time, and I'm doing more and more and more and more of it, you know, as I go forward. It just makes sense to me. A lot of things I write are, they're not musicals without music, but they are really influenced by music. I mean the music is very, very much the foundation of the plays that I write. And you can, I've often written drafts of plays that are, the words are all wrong, but the rhythm is right. So I just take out the words and write new words to the same rhythms, you know, of the words that were there initially. So music is important. And yeah, more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more. Thanks for asking. I will, yes, I love that word conjoined. Conjoined at the, where would they be conjoined? I wrote, so here's the story. Yeah, I told you, I talked about the story of the birth of fucking eight in the blood. I was in a canoe, not far from here in Nantucket or something. I think, well you're laughing, but it's true. I was in a canoe. It was a long time ago. I was in a canoe. And we were paddling along and I was just a friend who I think is a professor. Oh, she's a professor at Brown now. Anyway, she was also a block of downtown. We were paddling along and I said to her, I was in the back of the canoe, she was in the front. And I said, I'm going to write a riff on the scarlet letter. I'm going to call it fucking eight. She didn't laugh. So we get back to land and you know, you know, the mud on your feet and pulling the canoe ashore and all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, hey, it's not a bad idea. You know, it still makes sense. I'm still interested in it. You know, what do I got to do to write it? Well, first I got to read the scarlet letter. My point. And then I read the scarlet letter. I set out to write this riff on the scarlet letter called fucking eight. I don't adaptation a riff, right? Okay. So I write this thing and I'm now it's like a couple years past. I've written like four drafts and they're all really long and they all feature character named Hester and a whole bunch of other events that really have nothing to do with the scarlet letter. And I found the hit the wall went, okay, I got like four drafts and it's not working. It's just not working. It's not coming together. What do I do? You should come up and play something. You see a guitar. Anyway, I was like, who is tangent? Is he distracted? But so I say to the draft, okay, you're not working. You're not working. So I'm sitting at my computer and I say, I'll start the end and I'll just delete everything that's not working. Because again, there's the courage of writing and there's the courage of rewriting or editing. So I edit without mercy and I've got my sword of discrimination and I'm cutting, I'm deleting, click, click, click, delete all the way up. We get all the way to page one, the DP page, the dramatic, you know, the characters will play delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. Hester, I get to Hester. She's the first character. She's not working, delete. And I hear a voice, no, the delete pile, you know, things are deleted and they're thrown over to this side. And I hear a voice from Hester saying, why did you cut, me from the play? And I said, cause you ain't working, bitch. So the next thing to cut, of course, is the title, fucking A. And I'm like, oh, and she said, I said, but I didn't know what the story is. And she said, I have a story for you. And I said, Oh, what is it? And she went, it's seconds. I had a whole, oh, it's a mother, a homeless mother of five. And her five kids are played by five adults who are also in her life. She talks about the hand of fate that blocks out the son. I typed it, I'm like, oh, wow, that's cool. But that's not fucking A. And she's like, no, no, it's in the blood, throw it in the blood. And then I wrote fucking A, which is a totally different way. So they're not, you know, they're not twins or they are, they're, you know, they're related. They both have Hester in them, you know, Hester Smith and Hester La Negreta, you know, in the blood is one to do with, you know, that she has her own story, fucking A is more about revenge and how it burns you up, you know, and ruins your life. And these plays have, they really don't have much to do with the Scarlet Letter, although it was the Springboard, you know, and a very loved, much loved Springboard. So that's how they were born. Here's the story. Yes, behind me, yes. Right, right. I understand. So on one hand, I'm talking about entertaining all your fart ideas and listening to your own, listening in and listening to your own voices and wouldn't fuck my listening, but listening to your own voices and listening in and write a play a day through your own life. And how do you turn that around and make it something that will be generous to the world? That's a really good question. I believe this is a belief. This is you have to go out on faith on this one. And this is one of my beliefs, that if you are truly specific about your own life through your own life, you will serve the whole world. I feel that that's the best way to do it. Okay. Now that doesn't mean when I say I write about myself, then this is how I define myself. I think Shakespeare, because I like him, like DWM, dead white male. Okay. But he wrote about himself, but he was not, you know, Lear and Hamlet and Richard III and Henry VI, right? But that was him speaking through all those, you know, he was using them all as mouthpieces. So when I write Hester La Negrito or top dog underdog, I can't say that's my actual personal experience. No, but I write through myself. Okay. And I think to be, so you see yourself in everybody, that's this exercise and you see everybody in you. And that's a complete act of, you know, selfishness, but you see the whole world in your eye. You see your eye and the whole world. Myself, the big S, you know, so that's how I, so it's not a, I'm going to write a story about, you know, it's not the small s, it's the biggest. It's the generous giving, all giving self that I encourage us to write from. It's a good question. Okay. But by really, really, really minding your own truth, that's what the world needs. You serve the world. You can't not write about the whole world if you write about you. Yes, in the back. I'm happy to. And now, generationally, you are in, in, in, in their realm of art, you know, living, great. With your theatrical preparation, you, the way, what do you think of how black writers are, black writers are making their play in American theater, in American literature. You know, where, where they're ending up, where their body of work is ending up. What do you think about, or do you think about where your body of work is ending up? And how much of the, the, the instructions that you gave, the based on the civil rights, you know, influence what you think of, where black writers, like, all, you know, great. Like, like where, you know, we've come from so much, and where are we going kind of thing, right? I mean, I'm just, to quickly summarize, this is beautiful, but thanks for the things that you're saying. I think it's a really exciting time for all writers, but black writers, I mean, really, when I talked about where we've come, you know, from where we've come before, the folks who have hacked the path, people like, you know, Lorraine Hansberry, and, and Mr. Baldwin, and Mr. Wilson, and Ed Bullens, and Adrian Kennedy, and all, you know, countless others, countless others, countless others, people who've hacked the path, but for all of us, not just, you know, we make the mistake to think that black writers are only hacking a path for the black writers, or that Shakespeare only hacks the path, you know, opens up a path for white men, you know, and I sort of key into that. We can all, we're specific in our own groups, yes, and hopefully we can grow to believe that any opening isn't opening for all of us, right? So it's a wonderful time for us, and still there's the glass ceiling, you know, I mean, still there are limitations, still if you're, if you're a so-and-so from a certain group, it is harder to get your plays done in anywhere, yes, that is true, and yet, you know, and still we rise, you know what I'm saying, we have to work harder to get the same stuff as, you know, we have to work harder than other people, yes, and still we rise. So it's a wonderful thing that we have more people to look at. I used to, when I started doing these talks, people would ask me things like, what do black women think about, I'd be like, I'd be like, well, there's Oprah to the left, and there's Connolly to the right, and there's a whole bunch of folks, you know, so never does, you know, what do white women from wherever think about, what do white men from wherever, we don't do that, we shouldn't be doing that, what do people from Boston think about, well, there's all kinds of neighborhoods in Boston, so you wouldn't want to just ask one, but it's a wonderful time, I think, for all artists, and it's also a difficult time, maybe more difficult than it used to be, because the rules are, the game is more subtle now, the game is much more subtle, there are those of us who have risen through the cracks and the ranks, and there are still those of us who are in despair, you know, there are those of us who are succeeding, there's a president in the White House, and there's still people in despair, and that's on every level in every field, you know, so it's a beautiful time, it's like, you know, Dickens said the best of times, worst of times, I think, for writers, for everybody, yes. Right, right, how do you edit? How do you edit? It's a great question, so it sounds like you're probably pretty good at getting it down on the page, right, I'm assuming you're talking about your own writing, and then how do you edit? It's, you find, you feel, it's a feel thing, right, it's a feel thing, and you try to feel where the story wants to go, and we talked about this and watched me work a little earlier today, if you want to go stay from Boston to Santa Monica, that's your line, and if you find yourself continually moving out and going to Greenland, you might have to cut the little Greenland bit, okay, and put it in another play, and put it in another work, right, so you try to really feel where your story wants to go, where your play wants to go, and have the bits adhere to that journey, right, okay, and that's basically what I do, I just, and I don't mind cutting, it makes me very popular with directors, they always look at me, you're going to cut that? I'm like, yeah, cut it, you know what I mean? I don't care, it doesn't fit, hey, why do I want to sit, why do I want to sit through it and listen to it more than once, you know, so just cut, I know that it'll come back if it's meant to be in something, you know, yes. When you're writing a play, do you ever have the experience of the characters kind of taking on minds of their own, and kind of like just taking their own course within your within your imagination, and it's as if you're not in control, kind of? Yes, he asked, do writers, do I have had the experience of writers, the characters sort of have minds of their own, you know, and they'll take their own course, or horse, I couldn't, you know, gallop off and do things kind of, wow, I didn't know you were doing that kind of thing, all the time, all the time, and that's William Faulkner, I listen to the voices, characters with enough energy, they will start to inform you about what's going on, it's like a two-year-old, he's like, oh, he's just a sweet little baby, no, no, yeah, they'll start doing their own thing, right, and that's, they're coming into their own, and the best thing you can do is listen to them, because I think they know, well, I often think they know more than you do, and so again, keep the line, you know, we are going to send them out of from Boston and see how they will hear that, and sometimes maybe they'll take that work to Greenland, maybe it's where you got to go, maybe not, you have to pay attention, you know, but oh, definitely, all the time, yes? Have I ever tried to write myself, like, correct? This is what I'm doing right now, you haven't noticed? Like, write myself, let me get you through this. Is that what you're trying to do? No? No? No. No, why do you ask them? To write me? Yeah, I, um, the writing, have I ever tried to write myself or put myself as a character in a play? I, when I say that's what I'm doing right now, that is what I'm doing right now, that, I mean, so this is how I do it, yes, I do it, it's not a conventional play, it's a play where there's no fourth wall, and we do interactive things with the audience, like, watching the work is another kind of show, where I'm playing in Susan Lord Parks, and actual work gets done, so I, so that's kind of how I do it, and then I have to talk to the audience to break down the fourth wall to make it look as real as possible, yeah, so yes, but it doesn't look like, you know, a sort of conventional play, it looks like a non-traditional play, definitely, it looks like a life, hold a mirror up in nature, yes. Right, right, right, do I feel beholden to produceability? Um, too many characters can't produce that, or too big a set shouldn't produce that, I don't worry about it too much, although I do write with a show in mind, you know, we have a show, The Father Comes Home to the Wars plays, I just finished parts one and two, so now we have parts one, two, and three, we're going to do them at the public theater, and we're going to do a reading, and then another reading, and then we're going to kind of march along, um, the cast configuration is very interesting at this point, because we have a lot of folks in it, and some people only appear for little bits of the show, and we'll see what happens, you know, I mean hopefully the budget can accommodate that, or maybe I'll come up with a rewrite to make them all like one person, I'll do it all, um, but I don't worry about it too much, the main thing is to tell the story, you know, tell the story, the way it needs to be told, and we'll find some way to produce it, not everything has to be produced in a grand man, or either, you know, 365, you know, was done very much on the cheap, so I believe in theater too, not poor, cheap, cheap, oh, okay, okay, we'll say it was like one more, yes, oh, people pointing to you, yes, what does success mean to me, there's a cheer, I used to be a cheerleader when I was a child, s-u-c-c-e-s-s, that's the way we spell success, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, it's, it's sort of getting through the day, it's sort of getting through the day in a good way, no really, it really is, because, because once you start thinking I have, I have done, you know, all that's behind you, and really it's dealing with the present moment in a beautiful way, making the present I'm making right now, lovely, for as many people as you possibly can, and that's what success is for me, and as long as I'm able to continue to do that, in the present moment, lovely, then I'll feel like, ah, you know, and we say, um, that's, that brings us to suggestion number one million and one actually, I was in Myanmar or Burma, you could actually say either one now, and we, um, I was doing some writing stuff, they did, they were one of the groups that did 365, and years later I went to visit them, it was a couple years ago, and we were talking, I kept saying, um, when we write we say thank you, thank you, thank you, we say thank you to the spirit, we say thank you to our community, and we say thank you to ourselves, and this, and I kept doing this, the whole two weeks I was there, thank you, thank you, thank you, and they said wait, wait a minute, Susan, we say the same thing, we say tharu, tharu, tharu, because they're Buddhist, right, so they don't do the gesture, they say tharu, tharu, tharu, and so that's what we'll say today, tharu, tharu, thank you, thank you, thank you, but thanks for going to go, okay.