Oskar Eustis doesn’t believe in giving audiences a heads-up. “When you have a trigger ­warning, you’re implying that people need to be protected from pain,” says Eustis, the artistic director of New York’s Public ­Theater. “I think real art says, ‘No, you don’t. What you need is the chance to face it.’”



He has certainly had the opportunity to put this theory to the test. In his 14 years at the head of the Public, Eustis has been the mastermind behind not only star-studded productions that have brought the likes of Glenn Close and Jake Gyllenhaal to its stages, but also dozens of boundary-pushing works, including a 2017 production of Julius Caesar at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park that sparked national controversy for modeling the Roman general after the sitting American president. (“When we hold the mirror up to nature,” Eustis said on the show’s opening night, “often what we reveal are disturbing, upsetting, provoking things. Thank God. That’s our job.”)

When we hold the mirror up to nature, often what we reveal are disturbing, upsetting, provoking things. Thank God. That’s our job.

Shows at the Public Theater—which opened in 1967 with the world premiere of Hair and would go on to mount such iconoclastic hits as A Chorus Line, Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk, Fun Home, and Hamilton—often take big risks and ask important questions not only about the issues of the day but about the role of art in our culture.

Indeed, over its five decades the Public has won 59 Tonys and six Pulitzer Prizes, no small feat considering that it is a nonprofit and is essentially a regional theater that just happens to be in one of the world’s most discerning places.



Suzan-Lori Parks and Oskar Eustis in rehearsal for White Noise. Joan Marcus

Before Eustis, a Minnesota native, landed at the Public, he held positions at theater companies in Providence, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, where his Eureka Theatre Company commissioned Tony Kushner’s Angels in America; Eustis co-directed the play’s 1992 world premiere. Since arriving in New York, Eustis has become the face of the Public, through its successes (Tonys; a well-received $40 million renovation of its Lafayette Street headquarters; the Hamilton juggernaut, which got its start in the 299-seat Newman Theater) and trials (that Julius Caesar attracted hecklers and alienated corporate sponsors).

This month marks a milestone for Eustis, who is directing his first production at the Public since 2011. And it isn’t just any play, it’s the world premiere of White Noise, a new work about a group of friends upended by a racially motivated clash with the police written by Suzan-Lori Parks, the screenwriter and playwright whose Topdog/Underdog made her the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama, in 2002. Parks is also the Public’s inaugural Master Writer Chair (something like a writer in residence), and has long been a friend of and collaborator with Eustis.

On a recent afternoon the pair sat in Eustis’s cozy, cluttered office for a wide-ranging conversation about American art, the power of theater, and the importance of bravery in the work they make together.

Suzan-Lori Parks: I’m interested in hearing about why the Public Theater should be doing the things it is. Some people say, “What are they doing, engaging in civic discourse?” But the ­Public Theater never just shuts up and put on plays.

Oskar Eustis: There are fundamental principles that underline the Public, and they’re all extensions of the idea that this is a democratic theater. It’s our job to let as diverse a group of ­people as possible into the theater to see it, and also to turn the stage over to as many different points of view as possible. That freedom and diversity are also an artistic freedom. You make yourself free in the act of writing, and you lean into the stuff that scares you.

SLP: James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” We need to lean into what scares us and embrace it, and then we need to dig. What we think scares us is just the beginning.

Oskar Eustis in rehearsals for Public Work’s 2013 production of The Tempest. Tammy Shell

OE: I think [former Public Theater artistic directors] Joe Papp and George C. Wolfe believed that the theater has something to offer to the biggest dialogues about where we are as a people. There’s a way that we cannot understand ourselves without theater. And I think White Noise is a fantastic example of that. Everyone knows that we’re at a very uneasy place in this country in terms of race ­relations, and things are changing, but it’s not always entirely clear how. The Public believes that theater has something to bring to that conversation that you can’t find anywhere else.

SLP: Sometimes we need to approach those thorny issues of the day from different angles.

OE: An important part of the Public’s commitment to diversity is a commitment to diversity of disciplines. If the Public stopped fulfilling its broad mission, it’s not as though the art that we do would disappear; it would just go back into its own silo. But because we insist on doing all of that at once here, it creates a kaleidoscopic mix of artists and audiences, and it looks the way America should.

SLP: That’s what America is, and if we think it’s not, we’re living in denial. How do you spot talent for the Public, and how do you maintain relationships with artists?

Suzan-Lori Parks and Oskar Eustis at the Opening Night of Parks’s Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, 3). Simon Luethi

OE: I spotted your talent at about the same moment as a few thousand other people. When you started writing, everybody knew that this was a unique voice speaking about things that nobody else is. The real question is, what do you do about it? So, in a way we’re fulfilling our mission by giving you the Master Writer Chair. You don’t have to give us plays; we don’t own any of your work. It’s our way of saying that artists in our culture shouldn’t be measured solely by how much they can sell their art for.

SLP: You asked, “Do you want to come home?” I was living in Los Angeles at the time, and I said yes. And what do we do when we come home? We unpack. That’s the process I’ve been doing here. I’ve been a writer in residence before, and this is different.

OE: You’re in the prime of your life, you’ve been in this career for over 30 years, and, with White Noise, you’re writing plays as good as or better than anything you’ve written. I’m proud that we can hold you up as a model. Like a university, a nonprofit ­theater should support the leaders in its field. Lin-Manuel Miranda is going to be fine. He’s a great artist, and his art appeals to millions of people and he’s able to support himself. But we don’t want only the artists who have hits to be able to define our culture.

SLP: The reasons it worked are, first, it’s a great idea. And, second, because you didn’t just call any playwright, if I may say so, you called me. I take things seriously. When you said, “You’re going to do this,” it meant to me I was going to walk on the road paved by so many playwrights I’ve been admiring for such a long time.

Oskar Eustis in rehearsals for Public Work’s 2013 production of The Tempest. Tammy Shell

OE: You became the Master Writer Chair after we had known each other for almost 20 years. In this case I knew that you, specifically, would benefit from this.

SLP: That’s true. And while we all would love something to be a success, what I’m more interested in is something that sings to me. That’s why it’s exciting to work together on White Noise. I hope this show encourages a conversation, and there’s no one else I’d rather be having that conversation with than you.

OE: It’s a play I admire, and I want to do it well. But one ­advantage is that our relationship is so long and so deep that I care so much more about what you think than what Ben Brantley thinks. I want to go in there and do right by you. Listen, I hope the Times likes it and I hope it’s a hit…

SLP: It’s going to be wonderful. It’s fun to watch you work. How do you handle shows that could be politically thorny?

OE: Full speed ahead. I don’t believe in trigger warnings. I think the whole idea is wrong. Triggering people is what we’re trying to do. We want deep responses from people.

Suzan-Lori Parks, Mandy Hackett, Jo Bonney and Oskar Eustis. Chance Yeh Getty Images

SLP: It isn’t that you don’t have respect for the difficulty someone has gone through. That’s something people misunderstand. What I say is that I do respect that part of you, and I love you enough to help you walk through this fire.

OE: I’ve had trauma in my life, and there’s no question that I see plays that trigger a genuinely traumatic response. I don’t want to be warned away from that. The other part of this idea is doing things that people hate politically. We’ve lost corporate sponsors because of things we’ve done, and we’ve lost donations. I very rarely have to worry that if I say what I really think we’re going to lose support. On the few occasions that I’ve had to be careful about that, I remind myself that I don’t own this theater—I’m just its steward. On the other hand, there’s no way to do something that matters without ­risking people being angry with you.

SLP: And we are doing things that matter. You must have so many people bringing you ideas. How do you know when it’s a fit?

OE: The rational part is asking, do I believe in the artist and is that artist interested in the same things the Public is. There’s a kind of play we don’t do here. A colleague rather cunningly describes them as “white people being mean to each other plays.” What that’s describing is a certain class of white people, who usually live on the Upper East or West Side of Manhattan, and their fraught relationships. Those aren’t really of interest to us.

The Public Theater. Oliver Morris Getty Images

SLP: Do you do black people being mean to each other plays?

OE: Some black people are mean to each other in your new play, so I guess we do.

SLP: That’s not the only thing they do!

OE: A year and two months ago we were doing a retreat, and the actors read the first act of White Noise, and the jaws of everyone in the room dropped. It was clear that this was meant to be, and within a minute I said, “I want to direct this.” Then we spent six months looking at other options [for director]. It was important for me as a producer to feel that I wasn’t forcing you.

SLP: I kept thinking that I wanted to have you as a partner onstage. The play isn’t black-and-white; there’s a lot of complexity. So much these days is thumbs up or thumbs down, liking something or not, and we’re losing the art of having conversations about a lot of things going on at once. You’re the perfect person to dive into that.

OE: I hope you’re still saying that in six months. At first I thought our relationship was too old and important to threaten it, but part of what happened—some of it was directing Julius Caesar after taking time off from directing—was that it felt good to be back in that room. I’m not saying I’ll direct a perfect production…

SLP: We’re stepping out of that comfort zone. I believe that if I can be courageous on the page or in a relationship with a friend, maybe that courage will be contagious and help other people. My parents used to say to me, “You are an ambassador of your race.” They were saying that I was a black person and we were living in places where nobody had ever seen a black person in the flesh. Now what I think is that I’m an ambassador of the human race. That’s why I wanted to team up with you, to have that conversation. You’re setting an example as a producer and director, and people are following your lead. The times demand that those of us who are brave extend ourselves.

Daveed Diggs, Thomas Sadoski, Zoë Winters, and Sheria Irving in rehearsal for White Noise. Joan Marcus

OE: It’s not just that courage is contagious but that we need to surround ourselves with people who ask that of us. You have to build a culture where people feel rewarded for fulfilling the mission, and when you ­create that atmosphere you unleash the human spirit. The first time we did a mobile tour to a prison, the staff came back asking why we do anything else. That’s what we have to offer the culture. Other people can create products that sell, but what we can add to the culture is a different measuring stick for what value is.

This story appears in the March 2019 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW

Adam Rathe Senior Editor, Arts and Culture Adam Rathe is a senior editor at Town & Country, covering arts and culture and a range of other subjects.

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