I Write To Find Out What I'm

I Discover That I Am Thinking About A Play, Which Is The First Awareness I Have That A New Play Is Forming. When I'm Aware Of The Play Forming In My Head, It's Already At A Certain Degree In Development.

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.

That's The Happiest Moment. When It's All Done. When We Stop. When We Can Stop.

There's Always The Danger That There Are So Damn Many Things That A Playwright Can Examine In This Society Of Ours - Things That Have Less To Do With His Artistic Work Than Have To Do With The Critical And Aesthetic Environment - That Perhaps He Does Have To Worry About Whether Or Not He Is Writing Too Fast. But Then Also, Perhaps He Should Worry About Getting As Many Plays On As Possible Before The Inevitable Ax Falls.

I Don't Feel That Catharsis In A Play Necessarily Takes Place During The Course Of A Play. Often It Should Take Place Afterward.