For playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, theater doesn't just reflect reality – it creates it

Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks is one of the dominating figures in American theater today. And when we first spoke earlier this year, she said she was just starting to think about her body of work over the past few decades in order to come up with an overarching philosophy.

When I followed up with her a few weeks later to see if she found a way to make it more digestible, she said no. Instead: "I learned all my lines! It's miraculous!"

Parks' latest show at the Off-Broadway Public Theater is , and it's her first go at acting. It's partly why, at this moment, Parks said she feels like she couldn't be "further at the edges of my creative imagination." She just wrapped up premiering her play, a musical about Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson, at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. She's working on her next show, an adaptation of the 1972 Jamaican crime movie for off-Broadway. And when we spoke, she was wearing a beanie that said – merch from the revival of her acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which is on Broadway right now.