It Has Always Seemed To

Theatre For A New Audience Is One Of America's Most Admirable And Exciting Theatre Companites...some Of The Best Acted And Directed Work To Be Found On American Stages, Engaging With The Canon Of World Dramatic Literature In A Vigorous Way.

I Think That When You're Writing Plays, And I Think It's Also True With Novels, It Helps To Have An Ear For The Music Of Language, For What We Call Poetry, For The Sound Effects And The Way That The Sound Can Produce Sensual Feeling At Odds With Or Consonant With The Content Of The Work. Your Work Is Also Gorgeous Writing. It's Very Unfortunate When You Open A Novel That Everybody's Loving And It's Just, You Know, An Excruciatingly Bad Sentence.

I Don't Want To Name Names Because They'd Be Mad At Me If I Did, But People Who Are Significant Novelists Can't Get Published By Real Publishers At This Point, Or Have To Go Through Two Years Of Trying After Writing A Novel That's Taken Them Five Or Six Years And Simply Can't Get The Thing In Print. Or It Gets In Print And It Doesn't Get Reviewed In The New York Times Book Review And Disappears Without A Trace. I Mean, It's Terrifying. I Don't Know How Anybody Can Stand It. It's Such An Enormous Amount Of Work And The Economics Of It Are Really Quite Brutal.

The Primary Thing I Should Do, Apart From Being A Good Husband, Brother, Son, And Friend, Is To Be A Citizen Activist. But I'm Afraid It Takes Away From The Writing. Not That Anything Depends On Whether I Put An Essay In 'the Nation' Or Not. But You Want To Participate.

I Think I'll Always Be A Better Playwright Than A Pundit, But I Believe That Writers Should Be Public Intellectuals And That Theater, Even More Than Film, Is A Place Of Public Debate.