The Difference Between Critics And Audiences 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.

In The Theater, Which Is A Sort Of Jungle, One Does Have To Be A Little Bit Careful. One Mustn't Be So Rigid Or Egotistical To Think That Every Comma Is Sacrosanct. But At The Same Time There Is The Danger Of Losing Control And Finding That Somebody Else Has Opened A Play And Not You.

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

I've Seen An Awful Lot Of Plays That I'd Read Before They Were Put Into Production And Been Shocked By What's Happened To Them. In The Attempt To Make Them Straightforward And Commercially Successful, A Lot Of Things Go Out The Window.

The Characters' Lives Have Gone On Before The Moment You Chose To Have The Action Of The Play Begin. And Their Lives Are Going To Go On After You Have Lowered The Final Curtain On The Play, Unless You've Killed Them Off.