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The Tune Up! is a new episodic performance series created by Suzan-Lori Parks (SLP) and directed by Bessie Award-winning executive artistic director of the Flea Theater Niegel Smith. It centers SLP and The Joyful Noise in a feature-length variety show that blends short plays, original music, and high-voltage performance.
Currently in development residency at Lincoln Center, The Tune Up! presents episodes anchored around themes meant to unite us in our shared humanity. Microplays, musical interludes, and raw, in-the-moment reflections move between original music with powerful lyrics in a variety show format that invites the audience into an evolving ritual of artistic and personal renewal. This is a sip-your-drinks, make-new-friends, dance-in-the-aisles kind of evening that traffics in big sounds, bold ideas, booty-shaking, and statement-making.
The Tune Up! is produced by TOPDOGSLC in association with Sarah Bellin and the Flea Theater.
Suzan-Lori Parks is a multi-award-winning writer and musician. She is the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for Topdog/Underdog which recently won the 2023 Tony Award for Best Revival. Her other plays include Sally & Tom (2024), Plays for the Plague Year (Drama Desk Award, Best Music, 2023), Father Comes Home From the Wars (2014; Pulitzer Prize Finalist), Fucking A, (2004), The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World AKA The Negro Book of the Dead (1991), and Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, (1990 Abie Award Best New American Play). Parks’ first marathon-writing “micro diary plays” 365 days/365 plays were produced worldwide in what was the largest grassroots collaborative theatre project to date. She is a Macarthur “Genius” Fellow, a novelist (Getting Mother's Body (Random House)), and a screenwriter, including: Girl 6 (directed by Spike Lee), Genius: Aretha (as writer and showrunner), The United States vs Billie Holiday. (directed by Lee Daniels). She writes songs and fronts her band SLP & the Joyful Noise. As a college student, Parks is grateful to have studied creative writing with James Baldwin, who greatly encouraged her creative efforts.
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