It’s been a month since Suzan-Lori Parks’ Book of Grace ended its run at the Public Theater in New York City.  But in light of the current events in Arizona, the play’s opportune lessons in border-obsession are timelier than ever.

By calling her latest play The Book of Grace, Suzan-Lori Parks summons biblical stories, large-scale morality, and everyday people living out epic consequences. In many ways, whether it be through the tragedies that befall the representative archetypal characters or the use of the kitchen-sink stage drama, Parks delivers.  But perhaps it is the more ostensibly secondary element of ecclesiastical writings that fully describe what is at work in this book.

Like most religious and moral texts, Parks’ play is written as an individual’s interpretation of a collective voice attempting to explain the chaos of the present-day world.  The current political climate in America is one of high stakes and extremes; in regards to immigration, it is enmeshed in a battle over the mixed messages of ‘help wanted’ and ‘keep out.’ The Book of Grace provides a space where audiences can interrogate this contradictory stance and the multiplicity of neuroses that result in desperate measures to keep power.

Through the very personal portrayal of three archetypal characters gone awry, Parks subverts the familiar dysfunctional family drama and challenges audiences to insert themselves into the narrative. And by presenting us with that most undesirable of dramatic places – the indefinite ending – Parks dares us to confront our own preconceived notions in order to make sense of it all.

Archetypes Gone Wild

The play represents two days in the life of Americans living on The Border.  Grace is the overtly positive, naïve namesake of the play who works as a waitress while hoping for the best despite her grueling marriage; Vet is her repressed, white, bigoted husband who works as an American Border Patrolman; and Buddy is his bitter, vulnerable African American bi-racial son who visits the couple after years of estrangement.

While the archetypal despondent housewife, repressed dad, and prodigal son are indeed represented, the characters are also cracked wide open through the complex relationships between them. The most pressing of these relationships is between Buddy and Vet; Buddy’s wields a simultaneous desire for revenge and connection with Vet, who has committed an “unspeakable” act on Buddy when he was a young boy. 

Since then, Buddy’s mother has died; he has also served in the military, and his stepmother Grace has kept in touch with him in the hopes of a family reconciliation. Many of these key plot elements are never stated but skillfully revealed through central staged moments; in the most bone chilling of these moments, Buddy plants a deliberate, awkward kiss on Vet’s lips to confirm our suspicion of the sexual abuse Buddy suffered.

Interspersed throughout the play are a series of interludes that present each character in their own private book. The actual book of Grace is a collection of clippings that reveal her ability to find goodness in the world. Like many middle and working class Americans, she has delusions of grandeur and hopes the book will be published.  But for fear of Vet’s anger, she hides the book under a loose floorboard covered by a rug, signifying the deep-seated sorrow that is the underbelly of such naivety and despair.  

Vet’s book is a continuous spoken credo on the need for tightly contained boundaries as a means of managing his persisting emotional extremes. He works daily to keep out more than illegal immigrants at the border as he struggles with his inability to the face his revolting past trespasses.

And Buddy – he communicates through the Book of Snake, a recorder rant on his desire for violent revenge spoken into the lens of a camera projected live onto a screen behind him.

Throughout the play, Buddy and Grace become “closer” than stepmother and stepson should, and they share this and other secrets behind the back of Vet, who prepares to receive an honor for stellar border patrolman service at a ceremony the next day.  All three are caught in a tense, complex series of negotiations that culminate in a confrontation between Vet and Team Buddy-and-Grace.  At the play’s end, we are left in a space of uncertainty as to whether or not Buddy will enact revenge, whether the dysfunctional cycle will continue.

(Un)Happy Ending

Unlike most of her previous works (Venus, The America Play, Topdog/Underdog) which use long, abstract strokes to make bold political points, Parks’ The Book of Grace is a more accessible piece of theater, and consequently, a more threatening piece of political drama. 

It is clear from the detailed dialogue, tightly woven circumstances and relationships, expert performances, and realistic set design (a functional stove and sink are used on stage for cooking), that there is something greater than time-honored theatrical paradigms and recognizable plot devices at work. The teetering ending substantiates this notion as it relies upon the audience’s preordained ideas on the identifiable premises to answer the open-ended questions.

In a Biblical tale, multiple interpretations are not only allowed, but encouraged.  In this piece, whether or not you want to engage in the process of examination is dependent on your level of understanding and interest in the dysfunctional themes.  It is a lesson in translation, and the patience required to do it well - not of a fixed meaning but of what is relevant to an individual’s life. 

I saw how the characters can be conflated with the greater state of conflicting American identity. The use of military imagery – from Vet’s job to Buddy’s army enlistment to the fact that the kitchen and living room were set in a desert yard with sandbags piled high in the backyard – begs the connection between these dysfunctional personal relationships and the defective power dynamics in our own country.  During a reactionary time of emotional inner upheaval, extreme boundaries are indicative of acute boundary issues; and no matter what law is on the books, these matters must be explored to get to the ugly root of the deep-seated problem.

In a medium that thrives on commercial success to remain a part of the mainstream, make no mistake that this is a difficult play.  Despite its exceptional production value, the work epitomizes that most brave theatrical exercise in sacrificing success to achieve an effect only the theater can have.

The urgent energy of The Book of Grace rests in the ability of its ending to grasp at the role of agency in determining the fate of our real-life pressing issues. I imagine this piece is en route to regional productions throughout the country, and am eager to learn how future productions will engage the current immigration debate. The state of synchronized horror and hope is the most useful space of change the play offers, not because the ending is unknowable but because without the space to process that the work promotes, it remains unthinkable.

The Book of Grace was written by Suzan-Lori Parks and directed by James Macdonald.  It was produced at the Public Theater on March 2 – April 4, 2010.