School Curricula That Ignore The Arts Produce

In The Theater, Which Is A Sort Of Jungle, One Does Have To Be A Little Bit Careful. One Mustn't Be So Rigid Or Egotistical To Think That Every Comma Is Sacrosanct. But At The Same Time There Is The Danger Of Losing Control And Finding That Somebody Else Has Opened A Play And Not You.

It's The Function Of A Playwright To Write. Some Playwrights Write A Large Number Of Plays, Some Write A Small Number.

Within A Year After I Write A Play I Forget The Experience Of Having Written It. And I Couldn't Revise Or Rewrite It If I Wanted To. Up Until That Point, I'm So Involved With The Experience Of Having Written The Play, And The Nature Of It, That I Can't See What Faults It Might Have. The Only Moment Of Clear Objectivity That I Can Find Is At The Moment Of Critical Heat - Of Self-critical Heat When I'm Actually Writing.

Each Time I Sit Down And Write A Play I Try To Dismiss From My Mind As Much As I Possibly Can The Implications Of What I've Done Before, What I'm Going To Do, What Other People Think About My Work, The Failure Or Success Of The Previous Play. I'm Stuck With A New Reality That I've Got To Create.

If You Examine The History Of Any Playwright Of The Past Twenty - Five Or Thirty Years - I'm Not Talking About The Comedy Boys, I'm Talking About The More Serious Writers - It Seems Inevitable That Almost Every One Has Been Encouraged Until The Critics Feel That They Have Built Them Up Beyond The Point Where They Can Control Them; Then It's Time To Knock Them Down Again.