Suzan-Lori Parks and Daveed Diggs on the trippiness of reality
Actor Daveed Diggs and playwright Suzan Lori-Parks.
“White Noise,” the new play by Pulitzer Prize-winner Suzan-Lori Parks (“Topdog/Underdog”), centers around a shocking premise: an African American artist — played by Daveed Diggs from “Hamilton” and the 2018 film “Blindspotting” — asks his white best friend to buy and enslave him.
Kurt Andersen talks to Parks and Diggs about “White Noise” and why even the most outrageous moments of the play are believable on stage. “Theater is the closest to real life,” Parks says. “Real life to me is not realistic. To me, real life is trippy.”
Diggs explains how the theater can be an “experiment of empathy” and why it’s connected with the current political moment. “Every play when it is performed is in conversation with the now,” he says.
“White Noise” is running at the Public Theater through May 5.