Jo Bonney is the director of Suzan-Lori Parks’s new trilogy, Father Comes Home From The Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3). Originally from Australia, Bonney is known for tackling plays that deal with sharp social issues and challenging takes on contemporary life. After almost thirty years of working in New York City, she has garnered particular renown for directing premieres of new works by playwrights including Neil LaBute, Eve Ensler, Naomi Wallace, Eric Bogosian, Diana Son, Lynn Nottage, and David Rabe.
BRENNA NICELY: You’re known for directing world premieres. What appeals to you about developing a new play?
JO BONNEY: Collaborating with the playwright is one of the great joys of working on a new play, which you obviously don’t have if you’re directing a production of Chekhov, Shakespeare, or Ibsen’s work. I’ve been lucky to work with playwrights like Suzan- Lori who are confident enough in their writing voice that they don’t feel threatened by my questions. As the director, sometimes your first reactions and questions can be useful. You’re one of the first to read the script and experience the story that they’ve lived with for a long time. Essentially, you’re the play’s first audience, and the process of putting the play on its feet is one of great discovery. One of the artistically satisfying aspects of working on a new play is that the collective spirit of everyone—director, actors, and designers—in a first production becomes part of the DNA of the play. For instance, Suzan-Lori was very present in the process, and although the script was already quite complete when we started rehearsal, as I talked over a scene and staged it with the actors, if she saw that a moment wasn’t quite landing after some serious work, she’d offer, “I think I can help there if I just add this beat or take away that.” You’re discovering the rhythm and momentum of the language and the story for the first time and it’s exciting. She can be wonderfully ruthless with her writing.
BN: As a director, what draws you to Suzan-Lori Parks’s writing?
JB: Really, what doesn’t? Suzan-Lori’s writing is very sophisticated and often lyrical while at the same time it has a great contemporary quality—funky and colloquial. That combination is unusual. It’s a use of language that you don’t often hear on stage and certainly not in film or TV. When I first read Father Comes Home, I was drawn to the epic scale of the three parts and the weight of the subject matter and then disarmed by the humor and crazy juxtapositions. I loved that the humor gave permission to the audience to laugh and relate to the characters as modern individuals.
BN: Why do you think those juxtapositions are so important?
JB: We are all extremely aware today that we are never unshackled from history. The events in Ferguson erupted as we were in rehearsal and then Eric Garner’s death and the subsequent acquittal and protests occurred while we were in performance at The Public Theater in New York. There is a straight line from the historical events taking place in Father Comes Home to the events in America in 2014. The play is a contemporary tale built on historical foundations or it’s a historical tale told in a contemporary vernacular—either way, a powerful combination.
BN: Could you talk about that fusion of contemporary and historical in relation to the costume and set design?
JB: My personal take after first reading the script was that the combination of period and contemporary was the way to go on stage, that the physical world of the play should mirror Suzan- Lori’s language and hybrid storytelling. If you take apart the costume items that each actor is wearing, there are some pieces that are true to the Civil War period, and then there are other items like sneakers, a fanny pack, or a rock ‘n’ roll t-shirt that are circa 2014. The same is true of the set; there’s the iconic slave shack, but the larger elements are very modern and fabricated from modern materials. I’ve worked with my costume designer, Emilio Sosa, and my set designer, Neil Patel, for many years. They understood immediately and ran with the idea.
BN: You could even say the plays deal with three different periods of time because there are references to Ancient Greek plays and epics.
JB: Well, hopefully it all becomes one; it’s seamless. Greek myths and legends are a part of our culture. They are the stories that we’ve grown up with and they are still relevant today. Some of the characters in the play have epic names like Hero or Homer, but they could be contemporaries standing on the street corner outside. One of the themes running through the plays is the question of whether we are doomed to always repeat our history, our “old stories.” Can we ever learn from history?
BN: The first thing that audiences hear when they come to this show is Steve Bargonetti singing and playing the guitar. Could you talk about the role of music in the production?
JB: Suzan-Lori plays the guitar, she sings, she composed the music and wrote the lyrics. She actually performed the songs on stage in our first workshop in The Public Theater Lab several years ago. Now we have Steve, who is fantastic, and he has become literally another voice in the production, another character. His job is to introduce the evening and segue us from part to part. He also underscores moments in the play and often anticipates a character’s arrival. Each of the characters has their own theme.
BN: As someone who did not grow up in the United States, how did you approach directing a play about an African-American slave, set in nineteenth-century America?
JB: It doesn’t really matter where you grew up; globally we have all participated in a history of racism. It’s a shared truth. Yes, slavery is about color, but it’s also about economics. One of the biggest themes of the play is the idea of the worth of a man: Is a person of color worth less than a white man? Is a man worth more than a woman? Is an educated individual worth more than an uneducated individual? Is someone who was born into the upper classes worth more than someone born into poverty? The worth of a man—and I use the term “man” loosely—is a subject that informs our society every day. Another theme is the question of freedom. What does freedom promise? Will it feed, clothe, provide security and dignity? Should it be given or taken? These are questions that reverberate around the world today. They can be very large, abstract terms that in reality affect every small human being.
BN: There are certain lines and metaphors in the plays that stick with you. For example, the Confederate Colonel says, “I am grateful every day that God made me white.” Why is this line so haunting?
JB: Perhaps because you know that no matter how much it is denied, this has been a cornerstone in the history of America. The line has an uncomfortable truth to it. In New York, there were audience members of color who thanked Suzan-Lori for having a white character actually say those words out loud. Without even asking for them, there are those who move through each day with privileges that others are denied.
Brenna Nicely is a second-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./Moscow Art Theater School Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University.
