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Yale Rep Director Returns To Suzan-Lori Parks’ Battlefield With 3-Part ‘Father Comes From The War…’

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‘I teach her work passionately. I have a special access to it that I want to share.”

Liz Diamond — who chairs the directing department at the Yale School of Drama and is a resident director at Yale Repertory Theatre — is speaking of the eminent American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks.

Now, for the first time in years, Diamond’s directing a Parks script again. It’s a major regional theater production of Parks’ latest success, the epic drama “Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3.” The play(s), a co-production between the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven and the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco will be at the Yale University Theatre March 20 through April 7.

“Father Comes Home From the Wars” explores themes central to much of Parks’ work: African-American identity, the American Civil War and divided families or communities. It is a genuine ensemble drama, encompassing three different plays. Part 1 is titled “A Measure of a Man,” Part 2 is “A Battle in the Wilderness” and Part 3 is “The Union of My Confederate Parts.” Most of the actors who serve as the “Chorus of Less Than Desirable Slaves” in Part 1 return as “Runaway Slaves” in Part 3.

Diamond feels that “Father Comes Home From the Wars” is an excellent introduction to Parks’ unique writing style. “I consider ‘Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World’ to be an absolute masterpiece.

“What jumps out at me when I think of the beautiful plays of hers I did years ago, was the dramatic structure. I always found the conflicts to be really strong. But in this particular play, the bones of the dramatic structure are more apparent on the page. Suzan-Lori is utilizing brilliant, idiomatic, poetic language in a full-on mature way.”

Around a quarter-century ago, when she had just begun teaching at the Yale School of Drama, Diamond directed important productions of two of Parks’ plays for Yale Rep: “The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World” and “The America Play,” which helped establish Parks as a major voice in American theater. (The Rep also premiered Parks’ historical drama “Venus” under a different director, Richard Foreman, in 1996.)

The last Parks scripts Diamond directed at Yale was a selection from the playwright’s massive “365 Days/365 Plays” project in 2007. Diamond takes special pride in the fact that one of her YSD directing students, Lileana Blain-Cruz, directed a major New York revival of “Death of the Last Black Man…” in 2016. Parks won the Pulitzer Prize for the drama “Topdog/Underdog” in 2001.

Yale School of Drama faculty member Liz Diamond returns to the works of Suzan-Lori Parks.
Yale School of Drama faculty member Liz Diamond returns to the works of Suzan-Lori Parks.

Diamond and Parks have remained friends through the years and live in the same New York neighborhood. While Parks is not directly involved with this production, “I have discussed it with her,” Diamond says. “And I saw the New York production, as a close friend of Suzan-Lori’s and a champion of her work. But I didn’t want to study it too closely.” That production was directed by Jo Bonney, the prolific New York director who staged Dan O’Brien’s “The Body of an American” at Hartford Stage in 2016.

Most of “Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2 and 3” involves the actors directly addressing the audience. Yale-affiliated actors in the production include drama school grads Julian Elijah Martinez (who plays Homer) and Tom Pecinka (who plays Smith and A Captive Union Soldier). Current Yale students in the cast include James Udom (who has one of the multi-part show’s central roles, that of Hero/Ulysses) and Erron Crawford. The New York-trained actor Chivas Michael has appeared in Yale Rep productions of “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” (directed by Diamond) and “A Doctor in Spite of Himself.” Most of the rest of the cast are based in California, including musician Martin Luther McCoy (who has worked with The Roots and appeared in the Julie Taymor film “Across the Universe”).

The plays feature original songs composed by Parks and sung by the actors, plus musical themes that underscore some of the stage action.

“She has interwoven the three parts with these lovely songs,” Diamond says. “These songs are commentaries on the action.”

Diamond extends the musicality into a metaphor. “These plays operate as three movements in a symphony. The end of Part 1 yields up the beginning of the next part. Then Part 2 does the same thing for Part 3.”

The plays, Diamond says, allow for a staging that is “remarkably sparse, extremely economical. Part 1 takes place in a slave cabin in the middle of nowhere. Part 2 is pretty much also in the middle of nowhere, and Part 3…” she laughs, “same thing.” Diamond and scenic designer Riccardo Hernandez (who did the carnival-style set for “Assassins” at Yale Rep last year) took this “wilderness” aspect of the plays to heart. “It really resonated with us.”

“The New York production was on a small thrust stage,” Diamond explains. “We’re doing it on two large Broadway-style stages” — Yale’s old proscenium-style University Theatre and then the A.C.T. space, which has the show in April/May.

As with the unadorned settings, Diamond continues, “[Parks] is really judicious about props. A knife, a gun, a piece of paper, a bucket, a spade — and let’s not forget the devious use of that word.” Much of the drama focuses on the relations between slaves and slave-owners, with the inevitable derogatory labels and insults.

“Father Comes Home From the Wars” will not stop at three parts. They are part of a much larger project that Parks is still working on. “She sort of coyly says it could it be up to 12 parts,” Diamonds says.

The plays are deeply influenced by classical storytelling. Some of the clearest references are to Homer’s “Odyssey,” including the reunion between a soldier and his dog. “You can take delight and pleasure in finding those correlations,” Diamond says. “I’m sure [Parks] sits there at her desk chuckling, chuckling at the puns, of which there are hundreds.

“The rich mining of classical war stories going on here is not limited to “The Odyssey” or “The Iliad” or Greek tragedy,” Diamond continues, noting that the play also references the “Bhagavad Gita” from another ancient war epic, “The Mahabharata.”

Rotimi Agbabiaka (foreground) rehearses “Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3” at Yale Rep.

“When you talk to Suzan-Lori about Homer, you see that ‘Agamemnon” is to the Trojan War as ‘Father Comes Home’ is to the Civil War. The story may be completely fiction, but the historical facts are a great part of it all,” Diamond says.

But the director, whose recent Connecticut productions include the contemporary military drama “Grounded” this past summer at Westport Country Playhouse and politically loaded plays such as Bertolt Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” and “St. Joan of the Stockyards” and Seamus Heaney’s “The Cure at Troy” among the many shows she’s done at Rep, assures us that “Father Comes Home From the Wars” is not about ancient history. The Civil War setting, she argues, applies to the here and now.

“There is an ongoing civil war that’s arguably taking place in America right now. There’s a quest for freedom that’s ongoing around the world that will require a civil war in the heart of every human being. These plays are asking ‘What does it cost to be free?’”

FATHER COMES HOME FROM THE WARS, PARTS 1, 2 & 3 are performed March 20 through April 7 at the Yale University Theater, 222 York St., New Haven. The performance schedule has changed slightly since the show was first announced, due to setbacks caused by the recent snowstorms. The show was originally slated to have its first performance on March 16. The preview period has thus been shortened by three performances, but the show’s opening night (March 22) has not changed. Those with tickets for the March 16 to 19 performances can reschedule for any other performance. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., with an added Wednesday matinee on March 28 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $90. 203-432-1234 and yalerep.org.