“I love old stories, mythic stories, epic stories,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks said in a recent interview. “The story of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson is one of those Great American stories.” Hemings, a girl enslaved by Thomas Jefferson’s family, was the nursemaid to his youngest daughter, Maria. When Hemings turned 14, she accompanied Jefferson to Paris; there she became his “concubine.” Hemings would go on to have at least six children with the man who would be the third president of the United States. Parks’s newest play explores the complexities of their relationship. —Jensen Davis