White Noise: (NHB Modern Plays)

Thirty-somethings Leo, Misha, Ralph and Dawn have been inseparable since college. Making their way together in the big city, they are liberal, open-minded and socially aware. As best friends and lovers, confident in their 'woke-ness', their connection with each other is stronger than anything else – until Leo is assaulted by the police in a racially motivated incident. Shaken to the core, he brings to the group an extreme proposition... Suzan-Lori Parks' play White Noise takes an unflinching look at race in the twenty-first century from both a black and white perspective. It was first performed at The Public Theater, New York, directed by Oskar Eustis, and had its European premiere at the Bridge Theatre, London, in October 2021, directed by Polly Findlay.

About the Author :
Suzan-Lori Parks is a leading American playwright. Her numerous plays include Father Comes Home From the Wars (2015 Pulitzer Prize finalist), The Book of Grace, Topdog/Underdog (2002 Pulitzer Prize), 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. Her work on The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess earned the production a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical in 2012. In 2007 her 365 Plays/365 Days was produced in more than seven hundred theatres worldwide, creating one of the largest grassroots collaborations in theatre history. Named one of TIME magazine's '100 Innovators for the Next New Wave', in 2002 Suzan-Lori Parks became the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her Broadway hit Topdog/Underdog. She was the 2018 recipient of the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award.

Review :
'An enormous provocation of a play... Sharp, zingy and oozing a darkly witty energy... a propulsive drama with pace, plotting and a deadly magnetism' 'The magnificence of Parks' writing is that, like all great classical dramatists, you know at some levels what the conclusions will be, yet the tension she builds as she unfolds her arguments has you leaning forward in your seat. She never for a moment lets you rest easy... Her writing [is] immense. She holds huge ideas within her naturalistic frame: the themes of what it means to be awake, to be woke, questions about what it is to be righteous and good, wash through the work... But the play never stops working as fierce, gripping drama' 'Savagely absurd... In White Noise [Parks] wields absurdity like a delicate medical scalpel: it's there almost constantly, key to the operation, but she controls it with deadly serious, laser focussed intent... it's a questing, forensic play, that uses Parks's mischievous humour and Albee-esque sense of character to take a brutally hard look at the constructedness of 'tolerent' Western multicultural society'