There Are Always Going To

I Don't Pay Much Attention To How The Plays Relate Thematically To Each Other. I Think That's Very Dangerous To Do, Because In The Theater One Is Self-conscious Enough Without Planning Ahead Or Wondering About The Thematic Relation From One Play To The Next. One Hopes That One Is Developing, And Writing Interestingly, And That's Where It Should End, I Think.

In The Two Or Three Or Four Months That It Takes Me To Write A Play, I Find That The Reality Of The Play Is A Great Deal More Alive For Me Than What Passes For Reality. I'm Infinitely More Involved In The Reality Of The Characters And Their Situation Than I Am In Everyday Life. The Involvement Is Terribly Intense.

I Suppose, Writing A Play Is Finding Out What The Play Is.

About Four Years Ago I Made A List, For My Own Amusement, Of The Playwrights, The Contemporary Playwrights, By Whom Critics Said I'd Been Influenced. I Listed Twenty-five. It Included Five Playwrights Whose Work I Didn't Know, So I Read These Five Playwrights And Indeed Now I Suppose I Can Say I Have Been Influenced By Them. The Problem Is That The People Who Write These Articles Find The Inevitable Similarities Of People Writing In The Same Generation, In The Same Century, And On The Same Planet, And They Put Them Together In A Group.

When People Don't Like The Way A Play Ends, They're Likely To Blame The Play.