I Like To Surprise Myself.

Whenever You Think You're Writing What Other People Want To Hear From You, And That It'll Be Commercial, You're Doomed To Disaster. Writing Has To Be As Truthful And Specific As We Can Make It. The Minute We Think That We're Reaching More People And Pleasing Them, We Get General. And Audiences Sense That And Turn Away, Shun Us.

Work With Good Directors. Without Them Your Play Is Doomed. At The Time Of My First Play, I Thought A Good Director Was Someone Who Liked My Play. I Was Rudely Awakened From That Fantasy When He Directed It As If He Loathed It. . . . Work With Good Actors. A Good Actor Hears The Way You (and No One Else) Write. A Good Actor Makes Rewrites Easy. A Good Actor Tells You Things About Your Play You Didn't Know.

Write Plays That Matter. Raise The Stakes. Shout, Yell, Holler, But Make Yourself Heard. It's Time For Playwrights To Reclaim The Theatre. We Do That By Speaking From The Heart About The Things That Matter Most To Us. If A Play Isn't Worth Dying For, Maybe It Isn't Worth Writing.

Young People Have Got To Start Their Own Theaters, Really. All Good Theater Is A Kind Of Mom-and-pop Operation. Start Your Own Theater.

There Are So Many Rules About Play Writing. I'd Have A Nervous Breakdown If I Followed Them.