In "Plays for the Plague Year," a look at what we've forgotten

Suzan-Lori Parks has returned with a new retrospective play Part 1: A Play for Us

The stage area at Joe’s Pub

As I entered Joe’s Pub, The Public' Theater’s music and restaurant venue, with its candlelit glow, soft jazz music, and waiters dotting on patrons ahead of the night’s performance, an usher handed me a set of two cards:

We invite you to reflect on your year of lockdown.

1. What or who do you want to remember?

2. What or who do you want to forget?

What or who do I want to remember or forget? It’s surreal to even be in this space — just two years ago we were all cooped in our homes, afraid of what would happen as we received a daily barrage of harrowing news about the COVID-19 pandemic. And while it’s still spreading, for many of us, we’ve returned back to some sense of normalcy. We’ve forgotten the fear we had of being in indoor spaces, cancelled concerts and flights, and the days of Zoom as our default watering hole.

For Suzan-Lori Parks, in spite of the trauma during the year of lockdown, she has chosen to reckon with the lockdown year head-on in her newest work “Plays for the Plague Year.” The show is based on the daily plays Parks wrote between March 2020 to April 2021. In the world premiere playing at The Public Theater, Parks plays herself as Writer and is joined by seven actors who flesh out and enable Parks and us the viewers, to remember and relive the year of lockdown.

As she writes explains in a note before the show, “these plays and songs are meant to give us some tools we need to process both what we’ve been through and what we’re still going through now.” It’s an apt description of this cathartic work. It weaves gracefully between the blissful ignorance of the start of our “hiatus” to the difficult conversations and protests focused on race and policing to the lasting impacts of COVID-19.

Parks is a dynamic force in this production — a renaissance woman that weaves between writing the plays, being a Mother, a guitarist and singer in the show, and placing herself in conversation with fallen figures and loved ones who we lost to the virus. It’s a demanding role and Parks plays it to the fullest with palpable energy and emotion. The same can be said for Actors 1-7 (Greg Keller, Leland Fowler, Kenita Miller, Pearl Sun, Orville Mendoza, Lauren Molina, and Martín Sola) who deliver impressive performances encapsulating the world and the Writer’s internal thoughts with just their small crew.

The cast of “Plays for the Plague Year,” (photo by Joan Marcus)

As the show ends, I packed up my items and left — with a flower (given during an especially powerful scene on the murder of Breonna Taylor) and my newly-purchased copy of the script in hand. I thought about the questions handed to me as I entered:

We invite you to reflect on your year of lockdown.

What or who do you want to remember?

What or who do you want to forget?

I think about all the parts I wish we could forget — the eerie silence on the streets cut by the harsh sounds of ambulances rushing down the streets, the millions lost to the virus, and the millions still suffering from the effects of Long Covid and loss of loved ones. I also think about the moments of unity — cheering on Healthcare workers, seeing the ingenuity of folks forging communities online, the hours spent connecting with friends past and present via Zoom, and the rallying cry for unity in those early days.

Looking back, I am in awe of the magic Parks and the cast are performing each night. It’s thought-provoking, beautiful, and tragic — a faithful encapsulation of our collective year in lockdown. It’s fitting that this work is presented as a play and not as plain prose:

“When I could have just written down my thoughts in a journal, I decided to write plays instead, because plays are meant to be done with others, in the company of friends and strangers — and for me, plays, and the resulting act of theater-making, celebrate our humanity and demonstrate the process of community.”

-Suzan-Lori Parks

If you’re in New York, "Plays for the Plague Year" is playing now through November 27th at The Public Theater.