Suzan-Lori Parks Does Realism

White Noise: “Suzan-Lori Parks does Realism.” At least, I thought it might be semi-realistic. Usually, what you expect of Parks is a highly postmodern structure—almost like a string of slam poems, all in AAVE with daring, extremely stereotypical characters straight out of the African diaspora. Instead, we have Leo, our protagonist. And if I close my eyes, my best guess is that he is doing his best impersonation of a Bill Burr stand up special:

“I can’t sleep.”

He hasn’t slept since he was 5 years old, when his teacher told him that one day, in the distant future, the sun would explode. Panic-induced insomnia spurred the discovery of a white noise machine. And then, Leo found, he slept like a baby. White Noise. It’s in my head now. It’s in Leo’s head, he says. He can’t tune it out. It’s constantly buzzing, ringing in his ear.

 Cut to Leo’s everyday life with his white partner, Dawn. He, Dawn, Misha, and Ralph have been couple friends ever since college. Ralph and Dawn are white; Misha and Leo, Black. Earlier this morning, Leo got his head bashed into the concrete by the cops for no real reason. Dawn, who is a civil rights lawyer, urges him to press charges and file suit. Leo has another proposal. To Ralph, while at their weekly group outing to the gun range…

“I want you to buy me from me.”

40 days a slave, he proposes.

Ralph is extremely hesitant for all the obvious reasons. Leo has drawn up a clear contract with all the particular terms to ensure no boundaries are crossed. Leo nearly orders Ralph:

“I’m giving you permission to transgress.”

Ralph eventually accepts. And over the course of the first few days of the enslavement, Leo feels better than he has in a long time. He feels happier, more productive, he’s drawing and writing again (presumably, he’s some sort of unemployed visual-performance artist). And, what’s most important, he’s sleeping again. It must be all that “white noise” in his system now that he has literally sold himself. People treat him differently on the street now. He walks around with a makeshift paper sign around his neck that acknowledges himself as Ralph’s property. People no longer stop and ask him where he’s going, but they stop and ask him for directions. They don’t ask him what he is doing in this neighborhood. He simply belongs there. Finally, he has a place and a purpose.

 Besides the fascinating, shocking premise of the plot, the structure of the piece alone is a masterful achievement of Parks. The first act embraces all the ridiculousness of Leo being bought by his best white friend in the same style that Rachel and Monica swapped apartments with Chandler and Joey for one week in season whatever of Friends.

 Misha’s show “Ask a Black” plays directly into this obviously over performative first act. In her weekly web show (“Tune in every Thursday at 8am!”), Misha turns on her best version of a loud and proud Black woman. Otherwise, she behaves much like Leo does when he is around Dawn: playing white. Here, she overplays her own Black identity. Is there any way to simply be?

 In act two, we finally get a glimpse at what is really going on underneath it all. In her quasi-Brechtian soliloquy, Misha confesses that the only microaggressions that truly bug her are the ones spewing out of her own community. Black people accuse her of not being the “right type” of Black woman while well-meaning white folks either constantly pity her or ask her, “a Black,” to blacksplain to them. There is no winning. We finally get the answer to, what on earth is Parks doing? Well, after nearly 40 years as a playwright, she’s doing something different. And she has earned every right to do so. While the subject matter remains largely the same, she has truly turned her usual structure on its head.

 The foil to Misha is Dawn: a blown up, do-goody, white woman fighting for the civil rights of people who live beyond her own lived experience. In her monologue, she describes that weird phenomenon that occurs between white friends and Black friends. Together, they are one way; apart, another way. But they are all better together, she claims (Here, a cringeworthy moment for the audience as they realize “having Black friends” doesn’t cure you of racism).

 After the 40 days, Leo is MIA. Misha is exhausted as well from doing “Ask a Black” for 40 days straight. Ralph is looking forward to capitalizing on Leo’s enslavement through a myriad of potential book and movie deals. Oh, and all 4 of them have cheated on their partners. The foursome will undoubtedly deteriorate. All 4 characters will be made worse off than before. Or were they simply exposed for who they truly are?

 Towards the end of the play, Leo learns that Ralph has published an article detailing his experience of owning Leo for 40 days. Naturally, there is a high level of public fascination and interest in the story. It’s also learned that Ralph has stolen Leo’s words directly from his journal, which he was ordered to give “Mr. Ralph” as his “master” at the beginning of the second act:

“Waking up is hard; staying woke is harder.”

At the beginning of all of this, we met 4 people who were performing “wokeness.” What they didn’t know is that they were, in actuality, asleep the entire time-- buried by the incessant humming of the white noise around them. Only when the Black characters were forced to confront their own generational trauma were all 4 actually made “woke.” And it was harder than they imagined. And they couldn’t go back to sleep. “Black noise….is just nothing,” as Misha says. Black noise keeps you wide awake. No solution is offered by Parks, or at least, none that I can find. The last line only further entrenches what we already knew through the action of the play and, hopefully, what we already knew about ourselves as Americans, what we already knew post-Covid:

“I’M AWAKE.”

What to do now?

This production of White Noise by Suzan-Lori Parks, directed by Polly Findlay, premiered in London at the Bridge Theatre, where it ran from 5 October - 13 November 2021.