If The Work Of Art Is Good

What Happens In A Play Is Determined To A Certain Extent By What I Thought Might Be Interesting To Have Happen Before I Invented The Characters, Before They Started Taking Over What Happened, Because They Are Three-dimensional Individuals, And I Cannot Tell Them What To Do. Once I Give Them Their Identity And Their Nature, They Start Writing The Play.

Unless You Are Terribly, Terribly Careful, You Run The Danger-- Without Even Knowing It Is Happening To You-- Of Slipping Into The Fatal Error Of Reflecting The Public Taste Instead Of Creating It. Your Responsibility Is To The Public Consciousness, Not To The Public View Of Itself.

When A Critic Sets Himself Up As An Arbiter Of Morality, A Judge Of The Matter And Not The Manner Of A Work, He Is No Longer A Critic; He Is A Censor.

When You're Dealing With A Symbol In A Realistic Play, It Is Also A Realistic Fact. You Must Expect The Audience's Mind To Work On Both Levels, Symbolically And Realistically. But We're Trained So Much In Pure, Realistic Theater That It's Difficult For Us To Handle Things On Two Levels At The Same Time.

Well, When You Write About People Of A Certain Age ... We Are In A Postsexual Situation. If I Write About Younger People Then I Write Sexually, Because Their Drive Is Sexual. It Depends Upon The Circumstances.