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INGE 232 - A Conversation with Christopher Durage
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2008 Inge Festival A Conversation with Christopher Durang
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video/mp4
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2008-04-25
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2008-04-25
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transcript of
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0:02
Good evening. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back. Welcome back.
0:08
I hope you enjoyed your morning workshops. Uh we're really thrilled to have you following
0:15
uh the conversation this morning. Uh we're going to have an autograph session both with Chris
0:20
and many of the other published authors who are here. So, they'll be uh they'll be in different rooms in the building and we'll have people out in the lobby to direct you where to go.
0:28
Um So you can purchase your books at the table. Please purchase three, four, five of them and
0:34
um and then uh you can go and get them signed by the authors uh prior to lunch. Uh this has been
0:42
a something that's gone on I think almost the entire time that uh the awards have been given
0:47
out that we've had a really sort of intimate conversation with the playright and they've been all wonderful. In Ramulus Lenny's year, my dog made an appearance on stage. Uh unfortunately
1:00
I my dog won't be here today but u so so you'll have to bear with us. Uh some other announcements
1:09
there there was a car that was parked illegally someplace it was a or has it been addressed?
1:19
It was a Buick. What? A Buick on the grass. It's Yes, it's a it's a splendor Buick. The reason
1:34
we need to move it is because we have um we have uh the TV trucks that need to load in there. So, if whoeverse car that is that parked on the ground, if they could please move it. Um and
1:44
I hope you will, for those of you who are not coming to the gala dinner tonight, I think it is sold out. So, next year get your tickets early. Uh we have the the viewing of Splendor
1:54
of the In the Grass at the independent cinemas tonight and that should be a lot of fun. And then
1:59
uh after afterwards, please visit the various local uh eating and drinking establishments.
2:06
Uh tomorrow, I hope you'll all join us for the tribute to Christopher Durang, uh which should be fantastic. Dang Durang, Mike Wood, who um who does the tribute every year,
2:17
is a genius. He hates when I say that, but it's true. and I know it'll be something that's spectacular. I did want to welcome a few people here today who I didn't get to welcome for. So,
2:26
we could bring the house lights up for a moment. Um, I I wanted to introduce you to [Laughter]
2:33
uh you're a bad son may be a splendid driver, but you're not a very good parker.
3:01
Each semester here at at the William Center in Independence Community College, we have playwrits and residents who live in the William home. And we're lucky to have three of
3:10
them with us. Uh today we have the two who are current playwrights and residents. Um Alice Twan and Adam Rosa
3:22
Adam and one of our original players and residents who ought to I guess probably
3:31
be considered the the playwright laurate of Kansas but she's I think our most published playright most performed playright in Kansas and quite a wonderful writer who
3:39
wrote the play about William in several years ago called touched we commissioned Marcia Solska
3:51
I we have as I as I've said before um we have wonderful supporters of the festival and that's why it exists. And so I wanted to to thank again
4:00
uh the Hallmark Corporation which donates money and also sends their RSC and writers down to us every year. And so all of you Hallmark folks, stick your hands in the air.
4:14
If you're not here to listen to me talk, so I'm now going to introduce a wonderful uh editor, author, scholar, and great great friend of the English Festival,
4:23
last year's winner of the Jerome Lawrence Award, Mr. Jackson Brier, who's going to interview. Please welcome
4:50
Well, uh, this is a great pleasure for me. Uh, I've told Chris that, uh, I've been an admirer
4:56
of his work for a long, long time. And I've been and I've I've been one of those who lobbied every
5:05
year for a couple of years to try to get him to come here until Caitlyn Hopkins said she'd never
5:10
come back unless we invited him. So, some today um and I've also sort of been on instructions
5:18
from Mike and from Peter to try to not sort of steal the thunder of tomorrow night, but I'll I
5:26
think inevitably we'll probably cover some of the same ground. I guess I'm always interested, Chris,
5:32
um in why a person becomes a playwright rather than a poet or a novelist if you have a creative
5:39
urge. uh what what made you choose drama as a as a medium rather than writing poetry? Or
5:48
maybe you did start by writing poetry? I don't know. But you know what what attracted you to drama as a medium? Uh let's see. Uh can you hear me? Good. Uh I I I always feel funny saying this,
6:04
but I wrote my first play when I was eight. and it was only two pages long. Uh it was my take on
6:12
I Love Lucy, which I'm sorry to say I'm old enough that I was a child when uh they were current. But
6:20
um as to why I started with plays, it was uh I assume because my mother loved plays and she
6:28
talked to me about them and um I can't remember how young I was when I saw my first play, but it
6:34
was it was I was pretty And then in in uh grammar school, I um um uh I read a great deal of plays.
6:45
I I tended to read plays. I did read novels, too, but I read an awful lot of plays. So, beyond that,
6:50
I don't really know. Go ahead. Um what did you read? Do you you remember in terms of plays? Uh
7:00
what do you remember? Do you read did you read the classics? Uh Um, let's see. I What did I read? Um,
7:09
my mother loved Noah Coward. So, so, uh, I heard a lot of Noah Coward. I have a memory. I don't
7:14
remember, maybe I was 10 or something, but she had some friends over and they read, uh, a fever
7:19
aloud, which I thought was, uh, was actually my favorite Noah Power play. Um, there's no
7:26
plot whatsoever, but I found it really funny. Uh, it's actually about a a group of people who visit
7:35
a a fancy actress's uh country home for the weekend and the actress and her family are so
7:41
rude to everybody that by act three the all the guests sort of creep out of the house and and
7:48
uh they're you know alarmed to see them gone. Um um and then let's see other things I read
7:58
um and and this is also the first time I read William in by chance there in the library there
8:07
are these books uh John Gastner edited that have like they're massive books and they they have like
8:15
20 plays per book and they were they were usually all the uh hit plays of Uh uh and back then when
8:24
there were so many plays on Broadway that they anyway it was a very varied collection and uh so I
8:30
tended to read you know all sorts of probably when I first read Tennessee Williams uh I I remember
8:37
reading William too and anyway so I read a lot of plays I I found it and I still have this tendency
8:43
when I read novels and I get to descriptive passages I get very restless I I don't respond to
8:51
That's the reason I think anyway. And and you had quite a bit of experience going to the
8:58
theater then as a relatively young man. Um yes I yes I did. I'm from New Jersey and my parents
9:05
uh brought me into uh well first of all I we live near Milburn where the Paperville Playhouse still
9:13
exists and I I um uh my first may have been Oklahoma. Uh that was a play that my mother
9:24
saw as a young woman was on Broadway and she just loved it and so um I think we went to see it as
9:29
her paper in the playhouse. Um most of you are too young to probably remember who Betsy Palmer
9:35
is from Got a Secret. She was also an actress and singer and I sort of saw every musical with Betsy
9:41
Palmer and I was pretty good actually. similar things with her. But um then um
9:53
uh when I was nine or 10, I started to be taken in by my mother to see Matt and Broadway shows.
10:00
And my first one was Fiorella, which was by Sheldon Hart from here last year and cherry pop
10:06
and that was a a wonderful one. And uh early on though, I saw how to succeed in business without
10:12
really trying and another one um Oh, Carnival. They they were both kind of my favorites. And
10:18
succeed in business in particular I think influenced me because it was in a kind of cartoon
10:23
style seems were very quick and they were fairly satiric and anyway I think I unconsciously was
10:34
influenced by that question. So, that gets me to something that may be hard for you to talk about,
10:40
but what do you think uh I mean, as everybody will see tomorrow night, if they don't already know it,
10:48
your plays have a very definite style to them. I mean, they a Durang play. I mean, it's hard to
10:55
define, but you don't mistake it for something else. I mean, satiric, it's dark, it's funny,
11:01
extremely funny. Uh, what what do you think? uh you know led to that particular way of seeing
11:10
uh life. I mean was it the early the early uh experience with things like how to succeed?
11:16
What is it your own take on things? What what you know you could have written tragedies you could
11:23
have written uh you know other kinds of plays but there's a very definite satiric parotic element.
11:31
Um when I was young I I actually when I well when I was young I started to write musicals. I
11:39
I don't compose music but I had a my best friend did. He uh took piano with my aunt actually
11:46
um and she he was her best student and uh he and I um loved musicals and um so we wrote
11:55
two uh fulllength ones. Uh we wrote one in in the seventh grade, I guess, when we were 12 or 13. And
12:03
it was called band in Boston. And given that my play sister Ignatius later had trouble in Boston,
12:11
it was slightly prophetic. But um uh but it was an extremely innocent play as any anyway.
12:19
It ended with four marriages which is very uh Shakespearean and and the uh story was of uh a
12:30
uh these two uh maiden ants who uh were bringing up uh their niece and nephew. Um and
12:39
uh the niece gets involved. I mean, a young woman of 20 or something in a local show that the
12:47
uh two aunts and their minister decide is offensive. I don't know why I I went on,
12:52
but I I have to say it wasn't any anger and it was just this funny light-hearted thing. And
12:58
um Uh that show was done. My friend and I went to Delbardan school in Marstown.
13:05
It was a a Benedicting Catholic school prep school from 7th grade to 12. And
13:11
um um I was a little shy certainly about telling teachers I'd written anything, but my mother
13:19
uh was very much uh prided herself on being like a press agent. She would she told the teachers
13:27
that uh I and Kevin had written the show and and the well anyway they they decided to do it and in
13:35
the world of you know high school because we were by now in eighth grade but it was the juniors and seniors who were doing it I mean acting in it. So, uh, it was very heavy and exciting and, um, oh,
13:47
and I do have to tell you, so sort of my case, we who know most might talk about Catholicism
13:54
later. Yeah. In the show, which also had the the show that really wasn't offensive that
14:04
the two ants were upset about, and they had a song called What a Scandal. Fun to handle. Um,
14:12
Anyway, I had seen the movie Gypsy and loved it and um I uh when Natalie Wood did her,
14:21
you know, rather pretty subtle strip tease, you know, she dropped her shoulder strap. So,
14:27
I I wrote a song that was actually uh called I Love Money or something. I don't know why, but um but anyway, the the uh the uh the the anyway, one of the niece the nephews,
14:40
I'm sorry, the niece's best friend, Susie, since this song, which is sort of a sexy one. Anyway, she dropped her shoulder strap at the end. Um which is either plagiarism or an
14:50
homage. And u anyway, the show was was very successful in my school. Oh,
15:00
I forgot it was an old boy school. So, we borrowed girls from St. Elizabeth in a nearby town. Anyway,
15:07
when the nuns came to see this show, they were very offended by the dropping of the shoulder strap and they said they would never let their girls be in a play at Del Barton again. Um,
15:19
but luckily the priest at the school just thought that was funny. And um when two
15:26
years later Kevin and I wrote another show that frankly was I think inspired by how to succeed in business was called oh god what was called businessman's holiday and uh uh anyway it was
15:39
it was the it was slightly darker because at the end the leading lady realizes the leading man
15:45
is a jerk and she doesn't marry him. Uh but otherwise it was rather upbeat. But we went to a different school for the for the girls and there wasn't a dropping of shoulders. Um anyway,
15:57
any anyway, I'm sorry I'm doing a sort of a long answer to your question, but in in high school,
16:02
my work was um playful, I think, but uh not not especially dark. And um my senior year, I remember
16:12
I wrote something called Suicide and Other Diversions. This was the beginning of my going.
16:22
It was it was also very much an absurdist piece. And I'm a little unclear where I
16:29
sort of picked up on absurdism. I I I think when I read the phrase theater of the absurd,
16:35
I really loved it. It just conjured up something for me. And uh and eventually I I read uh some
16:43
of Ianesco and interestingly even though Edward Albby is primarily not known for his absurdist
16:49
work in his early plays especially the American dream and the sandbox I guess
16:54
um uh he was taking off in the style of uh I especially loved the first half of the uh American
17:05
dream and I was very inspired by that tonally I And so, uh, anyway, I went then to college,
17:14
um, I went to Harvard and my, um, it was interesting, the rather worldly,
17:21
um, Catholic school I went to, the, uh, college guidance counselor, uh, didn't recommend a single Catholic college to me. Um but but he knew he knew no it's just
17:34
that they were actually very ambitious for their students and they they uh you know recommended a
17:39
lot of Ivy League schools and I was very startled because I I I didn't do well. My fir my my parents
17:45
separated and we couldn't afford to go to this school anymore. So I went to a terrible school for uh freshman and sophomore year of high school. And then I kind of out of the blue won a scholarship
17:55
back to this school I liked. um because some of the teachers had kept in touch with me and knew
18:00
I was kind of sinking in this other school. So I I thought, well, what kind of good schools can I get into with bad grades in my freshman and sophomore year, but now doing better junior doing well,
18:10
junior and senior. But the uh guidance counselor said, well, you know, uh uh in your application,
18:16
you have to stress the plays that you've written which have been done. And I left out both of those plays, but then done locally as well. U still with high school kids, but um so we had two
18:26
productions of both. Um, but anyway, when I went to college and then I'm gonna end this because I'm starting to feel like I'm doing a monologue and my classical monologue would follow. Um,
18:39
um, I uh anyway, when I went to college, I assumed I would keep writing and I had decided I wanted to
18:48
be a playwright and then I went through a very a bad sophomore slump. It it lasted two years.
18:56
Anyway, I I I started to question myself. I didn't know if I could or should be a writer. And
19:02
uh I really stopped writing. And then my senior year, I uh snapped out of it for various reasons,
19:11
including a helpful therapist and um who I went to see for free at college, which was great. Um and I
19:19
suddenly started writing again. And the play that came out of that was The Nature and Purpose of the Universe. Oh, is that dark? Um, and it's actually the play I got into Yale School of Drama with and
19:29
I won playwriting prize from Smith College. It was a very lucky play for me uh in many ways and one
19:36
of them was probably psychologically but the but the darker me style started really with that play
19:43
hinted at by suicide and other diversions. And I uh you know I guess the real answer is why did I
19:48
write that way? I I don't entirely know uh and I don't mean to oversell the problems in my family
19:56
origin, but they were very complicated people. There was a lot of alcohol alcoholism and as many
20:04
of you know that that causes a lot of trouble in families. And I um I dealt with it particularly in
20:16
late in college by telling stories about it but humorously stories that weren't really the core
20:24
of them wasn't funny but you know when something is is is painful sometimes you you tell it as an
20:30
anecdote in a way that's sort of funny. And um I did that and I think that that that really fed my
20:37
work for a very very very long time. Um I think if you I think with my play laughing wild in 1987 I
20:45
suddenly stopped writing about my family of the origin and since then I'm writing about myself
20:51
and the world and so forth and and and of course the family of the origin doesn't leave entirely but anyway I'm sorry a terribly long answer actually that antic that that terribly long
21:03
answer anticipated the next thing I was going to ask you and that is perhaps a few you've answered
21:10
it if you have you can go on but uh how do you see the function of the comedy sort of leavenning
21:16
or deepening the seriousness I mean comedy is a very tricky thing I mean uh it can sometimes make
21:24
what's serious more serious or it can undercut it uh how how do you how do you see the comedy
21:32
functioning in these plays which are ultimately fairly serious plays. I mean whether they're
21:37
about your family, about Catholicism or about the world. Uh is it a way of I mean Neil Simon always
21:45
says it or one of the things he says is you know it makes people pay attention and then you get it you know and you know you have laughing and then you undercut it and you got and uh h how
21:57
do you see the the comedy functioning as a way of confronting it or what? Um well I have a couple
22:04
of thoughts uh about that and and one u answers this tangentially. Um uh when I wrote that play,
22:12
nature purpose of the universe and I I wrote it like a month before the application for Yale School of Drama happened and I had nothing I felt appropriate to submit to there and I didn't write
22:23
it for that reason. I just wrote it um in this surge of energy. Um but uh at you as part of
22:32
your application, you had to say something about what you wanted to do in theater and uh It's odd.
22:39
I don't remember the idea of what I wrote, but two years later when I was had been uh one year later
22:47
I was I was accepted and my second year I worked in the burser's office where applications came in
22:53
and uh I thus had access to the files and I looked at my own file just out of curiosity and um I was
23:00
amazed at what I'd written as my intention. I I wrote I'm very interested in combining comedy and
23:08
seriousness and I couldn't believe that I knew that back then and I remember writing it. But
23:14
um um I think my mother had a wonderful sense of humor. Actually her whole family for all their
23:22
problems had good senses of humor. And uh I really love to laugh. So, I start by I enjoy comedy,
23:29
but I'm also troubled by things. And so, when I write about them, um, I just found myself
23:36
drawn to writing from comedy. I think I was also inspired by a number of writers around the time
23:44
that I wrote Suicide and other diversions. I I um had found the place of Joe Orton,
23:51
the British writer who wrote Loot and Entertained Mr. Sloan, and he his plays are very funny. is a
23:57
little bit um in a way inspired by words of being earnest in some regards I think but his topics
24:04
are very dark and he also interestingly brought in Catholicism very casually um and at the same time
24:10
I was very inspired by the films of Federico Fellini the Dolceia and eight and a half and
24:17
nights of a lovely film that became the musical sweet charity and um although he didn't his plays
24:25
were very his movies were very sprawling but um he also they were sometimes funny and he also brought
24:33
in Catholicism very uh second nature just because Italy was such a Catholic country and and I don't
24:42
know not all of you will know his movies but in eight and a half the little boy a lot of it is
24:48
a memory of this director making a movie and the little boys um in his memory he and other little
24:55
boys run to the beach where there's this strange woman who lives in a shack on the beach and she's
25:01
this strange combination of scaryl looking and sexy and the little boys come and she dances for
25:07
them and it's scary and she she doesn't actually go to nudity but it's a very sexual dance and then
25:13
um the priests show up and chase the boys down the beach and then they punish them and make priests
25:19
stand on stools and shake their fingers at them and it was very funny but I mean it was also about
25:26
um uh the church's frankly obsessive fear and disgust at sex and uh you know I I was struck
25:38
at the time you know to see that I mean it was a a foreign film but uh I related to it
25:45
uh from my own Catholic teaching and um and then I guess the only other thing I'll say about the
25:52
um the dark It's hard to explain about laughing about serious things. Um especially because some
26:00
people don't and it just seems upsetting to me. I understand. But uh uh my with all this alcoholism
26:11
in my family yet when I was 13 I I felt like my life had turned into uh instead of hellopin
26:17
alcoholic a popin because not only I my father had this drinking problem and his father did and my
26:24
mother's father did but all of a sudden my aunt and uncle announced that they did and they went
26:30
into AA and my my best friend's mother went into AA and AA is a terrific organization so admire
26:37
and admire the people who go there and get help there. But all of a sudden, alcoholism was just so prevalent. And my mother went to Alan on and uh my father never acknowledged he had a drinking
26:47
problem. He's a very nice man, by the way. Um but it was nonetheless a problem. And um uh I
26:56
found and I think it's one reason that I went into depression in college because I had this thing in
27:02
my head with none of the adults able to get on or to problem solve. I have this mantra in my head
27:08
that said nothing ever works out and I still have that mantra but I'm aware of it now and I can say
27:15
to myself shut up or I choose not to believe that or that's not true some things do work out but
27:23
um I was in the throws of that in college it was very problematic um I'm sorry but where I was
27:29
aiming was that later in my life to my surprise when I was in my 30s and thought and was fairly
27:35
stuff. I thought there was something called adult children of alcoholics which was this group for
27:41
uh people who grew up in families of alcoholics. And uh I uh with an actor friend went to it and
27:48
and uh the theory behind it was that there were that you know everybody who lives in the within
27:54
an alcoholic family system suffers because you start acting in funny ways. I mean I'm a worrier
28:00
so I plan ahead endlessly and sometimes it's hard to get out the door because I think of the things that might happen if I don't do X, Y, and Z. Um, so I then went to that program for a
28:12
while and then I also went to Alanon even though I wasn't dealing with a active alcoholic in my life.
28:18
I I just went there because I felt there was a lot of wisdom in it. And where I'm heading is that sometimes in Alanon in particular with some of the people who were living with an active alcoholic,
28:30
they would tell the story of of awful things that happened. I'm actually remembering one not that I
28:37
saw but my mother told me about which is that uh this woman in Alanon when she went was saying uh
28:43
we also then the other day uh my husband uh you know I complained about the door and he took all
28:51
the door knobs off all the doors in the house and then uh I asked him to turn the light off
28:56
and he took a hammer and he smashed the light and um I um [Music] I can feel the sound changing. Am
29:10
I off again or something? I'm on. Great. Um I um anyway when these awful stories are told in a room
29:20
of people of sympathy who understand what people are through but can also hear how you know [Music]
29:32
can hear mice. What mice? Wait one second.
29:44
I can probably also pretend I'm um but I've lost my place. Uh just when uh people
29:54
uh talk that that way and tell what they've been through, there comes a time when the entire room will laugh because it's just so extreme that they know
30:06
um And it's that kind of thing that I testing, testing, testing, testing, testing. Hello.
30:24
Both switches. I think they're
30:48
Well, but you know, oddly, I can tell I'm gonna I'm gonna get tired talking if I don't have the mic. What?
31:01
I think it's working now. Is it working? Is this working now? Here. Take this one. Take this one. And And does this work?
31:12
And this one. Oh, yes.
31:19
Um anyway, uh I'm gonna just wrap that up. But in Alabama, uh people sometimes laugh
31:28
at the extremity of the awful things that have happened. And and it's it's a it's a generous
31:35
laugh. It's not a laughing at. It's it's a oh my god, you get how crazy you've been acting. You
31:42
must really stop. And um I know that some of my plays are like that. So that's kind of that answer
31:54
but not but not all of them. In other words, the laughter in all in the plays is not all well let
32:00
me not take your line is the laughter in all of them generous do you think? In other words, say
32:06
sister Mary Ignatius uh is an Allen. So yeah, but I mean in adopting in adop I mean because I think
32:14
what you're saying is the line one of the things you're saying is the line being between being
32:19
hilariously funny and being extremely serious is sometimes a very very slim line. And of course
32:27
that's what makes your play so wonderful that you seem to be able to tread that line. But is
32:32
the laughter in the plays always generous? I mean, do you feel, for example, in Sister Mary Ignatius,
32:38
are are we always supposed to be generous towards that? Do you um No, I agree. Not all the laughter
32:49
in all my plays would I describe as generous. I I think I was simply talking about that there are
32:57
some people for whom laughing at dark things just doesn't work ever. And I was trying to explain
33:03
that I'd experienced from unhappy things in life, there are times when you can laugh at it and go,
33:10
"Oh god, that's awful." Um, so I'm just saying that's part of where it comes from. Um, I gosh,
33:20
Sister Mary is a in a way is a different play and maybe Betty Summer Vacation is too. It's funny,
33:28
my plays are sometimes called satires, and satire has a very specific definition that I kind of
33:34
think we should probably stick to. uh uh uh which is that it it's you I don't have the exact thing
33:41
in my brain but it's it's um it's making pointing out and criticizing something with humor that the
33:54
author thinks is wrong and should be fixed. Um, so it's not parody, which is usually affectionate.
34:02
And when people would say the marriage of Bettonoo is a satire of ma marriage, I go, "What?" It's a sad it's a sad story told in comic terms and actually relates this to the Alanon
34:13
reference, but it's not it's nothing about we must solve marriage. I mean, what does that mean?
34:19
So I think I think frankly a lot of critics can be very lazy and because I wrote something
34:25
that is a genuine satire system very Ignatius they just assume anything else I've written is a satire and actually that play was followed by beyond therapy which you know I admit I am
34:35
poking fun at therapy but some critics actually were upset that that play wasn't more angry and
34:42
u uh one critic said that you know in Sister Mary they take guns out and they're real uh in theater
34:50
terms real and people get killed and in beyond therapy uh the upset lover Bob brings a starting
34:56
pistol but it's not real he's just expressing his anger and uh and that was supposedly a flaw
35:02
but it's actually a difference in tone beyond I I'm actually a big I'm in favor of therapy
35:07
I've found very helpful in my life but in beyond therapy I was pointing out the ways that people
35:13
can get you know over you know get too involved with their therapist uh emotion psychologically.
35:19
So um so but sort of to go back maybe to what you were saying about Sister Mary Ignatius
35:24
um you know it's it's funny I uh I wrote that play after I had stopped believing in in my uh
35:39
religious faith. Um, and I wrote it looking back a little a bit surprised at the complexity of what
35:50
uh we baby boomers uh had been taught uh starting at age six. Uh, and part of it is it's very,
35:58
you know, when you're told age six, don't touch the oven, you'll burn yourself, or don't eat meat on Friday or you'll go through hell for eternity. you just accept that. Um well,
36:14
it's true and and I uh I had forgotten a lot of these things. Um I just had forgotten them.
36:22
Uh the other one that I had well anyway the other one that's so odd is that you know if a
36:29
baby is born and and not bapti and dies before it's baptized God can't let it into heaven. Uh
36:39
but the baby wasn't bad. So he's sent he or she is sent to a not bad place called limbo. It's just that they never see God and it's it's over here. And you know you again
36:50
you sort of accept that oh okay okay um but then later on you think is God a bureaucrat?
37:00
So, um, I I was startled when I wrote the play to find that all Sister Mary
37:08
had to do was say some of these things and occasionally I would play tricks with the
37:16
uh, frankly the conscious tricks with the wording that made it funnier. But with limbo, I I didn't really do much of anything except say what they said. And uh, um, Kerr the
37:28
New York Times critic who didn't really like my work very much and I didn't like his but um but he uh yes I know he was also famously Catholic but he wrote a not he wrote a not bad
37:42
um uh review of Sister Mary saying you know in truth he's he's actually pretty accurate about
37:47
what he says that was said. Um so I thought that that was interesting on his part. Um,
37:54
so, so a lot of that play, uh, and you know, another thing that was odd about it,
38:00
I didn't feel angry writing it. A lot of people say it's an angry play. Looking back, I can see I I see why you think it's an angry play. And it may even be an oddness on my part
38:10
that I wasn't feeling angry. I just felt peaceful. Um, so for a lot of the stuff about the the dogma,
38:17
and it's mostly it's almost only about two topics. was about things that were either highly debatable
38:23
like um not eating meat on Friday, but that was meant to be uh uh out of respect for the
38:31
fact that Christ died on Good Friday that one should make a sacrifice every Friday and and
38:39
frankly they should go on a diet on Friday as opposed to it was just don't eat meat. Well,
38:45
that became translated over years as uh you know, have a lovely salmon steak. Um but but you know,
38:53
that was totally a man-made rule, but the church at some point got so full of itself that it said,
38:59
"And if you don't follow it, you will go to hell for eternity." And it's just like, huh? But again,
39:04
I just accepted that. Uh and then all this stuff about sexuality sending you to hell. Um I mean,
39:11
um certainly for teen teenage boys Masturbation is a big issue and uh according to the church,
39:19
it sends you to hell for eternity. So Hitler is in hell and you're in [Laughter] [Applause] hell. So,
39:34
so it's the it's the sort of odd rules as well as the sexual rules that Sister Mary makes stuff
39:41
with. And then when I was writing the play, uh, I came to a a halt where I thought, huh, I don't
39:48
know how how to end this play because she's just giving a lecture and the little boy's helping her, but I don't know. I didn't quite know how to wrap it up. And so I put it aside for several months.
39:57
And I suddenly had the idea of ex students of hers grown up at like 29, 30 showing up to to
40:04
ostensibly say hello and also to put on this pageant that they done when they were children.
40:11
And then because I write intuitively, I didn't actually quite know what the students were there for. So I like the audience didn't quite know what was happening. So initially they were coming
40:20
to put on this pageant. But I I did know that I wanted the the people to come to be these people
40:26
for whom the teachings had not prepared them. One was an unwanted mother, one was a gay guy, one
40:34
was a an alcoholic who sister liked the best of because he alcoholism is an immoral sin. I guess
40:42
depending I guess how we and then uh this one girl who had had two abortions. The first one when she
40:50
was raped and um and sister hated her the most. Um uh but as I was writing it uh it still stayed sort
41:00
of funny when the students explained why they they were upset with the teaching with her. But when I
41:05
got to Diane, who's the girl who had the abortion and sister said, "Why? Why? Why did you come here?
41:11
Why did you want to embarrass me?" And I surprised myself. The line I wrote. I wrote because I
41:16
believed you. Even though I'm not a woman and I didn't have an abortion, I did believe them
41:22
so thoroughly just 100%. And um and then Diane sort of went through and my mother had died of
41:31
a painful death from cancer. And That's not why I stopped believing. But I did stop believing due to
41:38
my confusion about prayer and actually connected to the Vietnam War because I was a student during
41:43
that time and I went to a lot of anti-war marches and went to and I was very close to a lot of Catholics who were very opposed to the war priest opposed to the wars and and but I'm afraid I maybe
41:56
I was a little well anyway that I started not to understand the purpose of prayer because We were
42:04
praying for the war to start stop and the killing and so forth and you know you know six months or
42:09
a year later when it hadn't stopped you sort of go all right so God is going there saying no I'm
42:14
going to let it go for six more months and we you know let all that killing happen well obviously
42:20
God doesn't work that way and it has to be some sort of mystery but then I didn't understand what the purpose of prayer was actually I just didn't get it still don't get it I guess um so um anyway
42:33
I surprised myself when when Diane suddenly said I after telling her a long sad story uh said and
42:40
but basically I think everything is your fault sister um and then sister says you have obviously
42:46
never read the book of Job and Diane says I have read it and I think it's a nasty story. Um anyway,
42:53
sis uh Diane then takes out a gun to shoot sister and I I didn't know Diane had brought a gun with
42:59
her. And so I had this impulse, oh my god, what happens? And then I thought I I just
43:09
intuitively thought I don't think sister can or should be killed. She's too powerful. She's
43:16
actually a little too entertaining. Um she's the lead. So I I suddenly sister did that
43:25
uh thing and I remember thinking the lady went by this sister went looking at Diane she went look out and Diane turned around she whipped up and shot her dead and I thought will anyone buy
43:38
that but I didn't I didn't want sister killed and um when when later it was performed and
43:47
the wonderful Elizabeth France was the original sister, you know, a lot of actors understandably
43:53
ask questions, why am I doing such and such, and Elizabeth never asked me about the film, ever? And later when somebody was trying to make a movie and trying to make it more logical, blah
44:03
blah blah blah. Um, I just realized how Elizabeth never asked me this question. I said, anyway,
44:11
she's such a wonderful actress. I said, Elizabeth, what I'm just curious, how did you justify that
44:16
to yourself? And she said, well, because you've written all this about sister is very upset about
44:21
the ecumenical council and the liberal Pope John the 23rd who made changes and wanted people to be
44:27
more out in the world and not be so cloistered and help people in the world. She said that I
44:32
believe that my s my mother superior forces us all to watch the evening news and I I don't wish to I
44:41
want to live in in the world of Christ in my head but so I've had to watch the the evening news and
44:46
I've seen what a dangerous neighborhood we look in live in and I realized I needed to get a gun to
44:51
protect my students if anything bad happened and I said thank you Elizabeth that's such a wonderful
44:57
thing Um, anyway, I'm sorry. I I do answer the longest questions,
45:05
so you better ask another one. I mean, the questions aren't long being
45:11
answered. Nobody wants to hear me. They want to hear you. That's why they're um I'm interested
45:21
in another aspect of your life, which is as an actor. I mean you uh I think probably of any of
45:27
our major playwrights you've done more acting than any of them. Uh how did that start? Uh
45:35
uh has it helped you as a playwright? Has it is it something that you intend to continue doing? What
45:42
is the relationship between the playwriting and the acting? Well, well, you know, it's funny when
45:49
when I mentioned that Noel Coward was an early um uh inspiration and a playright I read a lot. He
45:56
was also famous. He did a great deal of acting. He was in the original production of Private Lives. He made movies in which he starred like in which we served. Um so, and I also love to perform. Um,
46:10
and so, uh, I'd left out that in the band in Boston, uh, when we did it locally after the
46:15
high school did it, uh, I played the nephew. Um, and actually, it's one of my, well, uh, it we only
46:25
did it for like three performances, I think. And I just remember one of my happiest early moments was
46:32
uh the Saturday of the last show taking a shower to get ready to go to the theater and be in my own
46:39
play. And I knew it well now. And not only that, but I had a supporting part with a good song and
46:46
some good laughs, but I also got to be off stage a lot. Uh which meant that I didn't have the full,
46:52
you know, weight of the the thing. And you also got to enjoy it in some funny way. So I I
46:59
um at le parts and and enjoy them too, although I I do feel that they can be harder. Um uh anyway,
47:08
so I started out wondering wanting to be an actor and a writer. And then uh and I did do a lot of
47:15
acting in high school, including a couple you sometimes in plays not written by me. But when I got to college, um I auditioned for acting and I kept not getting cast and I just thought, "Oh,
47:26
you the small world of high school. I I guess I must have been better and I I guess I'm not
47:32
meant to be an actor. Uh although my senior year I started to get cast uh more and got a couple of
47:37
good parts. But anyway, when when I got into Yale School of Drama in the playwriting department, I assumed I wouldn't do much or any acting because there were full-time actors there
47:47
also studying to do professionally. And I thought if I could get cast in college, I definitely won't be working here where people come to study and um there was something wonderful
48:01
at the Y at Yale which is the Yale cabaret where where a a different show was put on every single
48:06
weekend and usually only rehearsed three or four days and they were sometimes musical reviews or
48:11
comedy reviews sometimes they were one night plays and um my um uh I also found out that you got your
48:20
plays done by befriending the directing students uh who then wanted to In anyway, I'd befriended
48:27
uh uh a director in my class and anyway, he was going to do uh my show, Better Dead than Sorry.
48:35
And uh it's the first time I worked with Sony Weaver, too. She was playing the part of Jenny. Uh and it was this strange, it was a very dark piece actually, but funny. Um and it was this uh Daryl
48:47
and Carol and Kenny and Jenny. And Daryl and Carol were married. and Kenny and Jenny were brother and
48:53
sister of Daryl. Although later we learned that Carol's a sister, too, but they've forgotten it. Um, and um anyway, we cast a very likable actor in Daryl and a couple days before
49:12
uh the first performance, he he dropped out for reasons that were sort of mysterious. And
49:18
the director had seen me something uh and so he asked me to take over uh so and I was good and
49:28
uh so it was kind of fun all of a sudden then for the rest of the year I started to be cast in other
49:34
other plays um you know workshops uh and many of them were with Sabourney so that year I really
49:40
got to know her well and actually one of the parts we played was there's a children's show uh and she
49:47
played the evil baroness and I played her troll troll and the troll liked to be beaten. So when
49:55
she would hit me, I could smile and look out. It was very peculiar. But um um anyway, but it it
50:05
ended up being a wonderful part of my learning. Uh I loved being in a play with these talented actors
50:13
around me and experiencing, you know, this scene isn't working. What can we do? How what do we have
50:20
to do to make it work? Is there a problem with the scene? Is it we're not doing the right intention?
50:26
All that kind of stuff. And uh also, and I've said this other times, although I I certainly valued my
50:33
fellow playrs, I found particularly at Yale, well, any case, I I found that the playwrights tended to
50:40
give you feedback saying how they would write the play if they were writing it. And that's not very
50:46
helpful. Remember, there was one writer who who wrote like Harold Pinter and he would basically
50:51
say, "Well, you know, I think it should be more mysterious or something, you know." Anyway,
50:57
uh on the other hand, I loved the comments from the actors because they tended to be more nuts
51:03
and bolts things like saying, "I don't understand what my motivation is here. Um uh when I say this,
51:11
do I do I mean it or am I lying?" You know, that kind of question. And I just found it very useful.
51:17
And then um I will add that I think I'm a a better and more interesting writer than I am
51:24
an actor. I think I I like acting and I can do certain things but you know um I I there
51:31
are many things I can't do. And um so when I got to uh New York and had my agent Helen Merrill,
51:38
she after a certain point suggested to me that I should be careful how much acting I I did or
51:44
went up for because she said you're you're you're presenting yourself still to the world as a writer and I think you can muddy it a little bit if you do too much acting. So I I sort of followed that
51:54
advice and yet quirky things occurred that um when Titanic was done and Keith McGregor Stewart is
52:04
in the house I hear her laugh and she was uh the lead as well as Sigourney in Titanic. When Titanic
52:10
was done as an e late night show at 11 p.m., we got mixed but good reviews and a friend decided
52:17
to had access to money and decided to present it off Broadway, but it was Titanic was a long one
52:22
act and it needed a curtain raiser and Sigourney and I had been in a singing class at Yale. Again,
52:30
I I I had a very unusual playwriting. The playwrights were not usually in the singing class, but I like to sing. So I I went and asked if they would let me take the class and I get Kate was in
52:40
that too. And um it was so much fun for me. I just loved it. And u Sigourney and I had done
52:45
a song together in a in in the show that we put on, the singing class put on. And so we decided
52:53
to do a curtain raiser for Titanic uh where it was the first time we did a show that we
53:00
was called Dos Lucitania Song. It was a parody of directed. Bertol directed Kirk Vile. He did three
53:08
penny opera and Yale did a lot of direct and vile and I love their work actually. I just adore it.
53:13
But it is so idiosyncratic and strange and German and um that we pretended to be experts on Berto
53:21
Bre and I wore tails and she wore a lovely red evening gown and ti but we purposely had all our
53:29
facts wrong and we said things like Berto Bre wrote the screenplay to Barry Lindon which was
53:37
And so then we would do a scene for Barry Linda. Any of you saw that movie this morning
53:43
and I saw it together? Oh, I hated it. I thought it was so boring and slow. I mean, I know some people love it, but we did the scene where Marissa Baronson and her little 5-year-old
53:52
son are sitting in bed with their heads hitting one another just staring. And we did that. Um,
54:00
it was just a crazy sketch. But in any case, we did discover that to do a musical thing for
54:09
a straight comic play is not a great thing to do. Uh, if if the audience gets used to hearing music
54:15
and all of a sudden you go to a play with no music, it's very strange. And so it was an odd thing to do. But um and though we had gotten good reviews uh for Titanic when it was off
54:26
off Broadway when it was on Broadway I'm sorry not off Broadway on off Broadway a fuller thing it was
54:34
uh gastly reviews just ghastly and uh I remember I was told that the Village Voice review was going
54:40
to be pretty good because we had a friend who worked in the Village Voice and so I haven't
54:45
gotten pretty bad reviews in the book a kind but negative in the times and then um who had
54:53
like the off off version but then some other bad reviews. Anyway, I read the Village Voice one and I said to my agent afterwards, "Will anyone ever do a play of mine again?" I just I I felt like,
55:03
"Oh, this is so bad." Anyway, they were really terrible. What was my point? Um, but a couple of years later, Sigourney and I decided to do a a longer version of
55:15
Dustin Satania. Um, uh, as an 11:00 show, we just felt like doing it. And I have now had
55:23
history of American film on on Broadway. Uh, Kate had been, and I'm sorry, Kate, I keep saying hi to you every second, but I recognize you laugh so much.
55:32
And um and Sigourney had been an alien. So we had both had some success in the world and we
55:38
decided to do it. And I'm going to I'm just going to tell this story because it has to do with actor
55:44
confidence. Um uh I was a little nervous that we were going to do this show and you know how funny
55:51
is it and all that kind of stuff and Sister Mary was the first version of Sister Mary was happening in Ensemble Studio Theater at that time. was at uh on an evening of four one act
56:01
plays. It was the second play and um a writer friend came to see Sister Mary and said, "Oh,
56:09
it's wonderful. It's just fabulous. It's great." And then he went to watch our second preview. No,
56:16
no, I'm sorry. He he had seen the the preview the previous night of Dustly Song Spiel, which started
56:23
at 11. And he said to me after seeing Sister Mary, he said, "You know, is there any way you can get
56:29
them not to review Doss Lucitania because it's not very good and you're not very good in it, I'm
56:34
afraid." So, um, he was a he wasn't always mean and he was very difficult to tell, but um,
56:45
so I had that in my head. I think he said this to me like an hour and a half before doing the
56:51
next. So, I remember going out to do my first solo, walking out and thinking I'm not very
56:59
good. And however, I don't know what this mechanism was, but walking on stage going,
57:07
I'm not very good. I thought that is the most crazy thing to say to yourself before you're
57:13
about to perform. And it made me giddy. I felt funny. And so I got loose looser and
57:24
I did very well. And it was actually it was it pushed me into being good. And by
57:30
the time the critics came, I was good. And uh Sabrina and I both were nominated for best performers in a musical in the drama desk. We lost to Patty Leone and Nvidita
57:40
and Jim Dale and Barnum. Um anyway, I've loved doing my acting when it's come up.
57:50
But what has it helped you as a playwright though? I mean, seriously, isn't it advantage to have been out there? And of course,
58:02
you've acted in your own place. Uh, you know, I I'm wondering tomorrow night how they're going
58:08
to do a tribute without having you up here acting some of those roles, particularly with Katherine here in Laughing Wild. uh you know uh has it had an effect on you as a playright?
58:21
Well, well, I think the the the one of the effect was when I acted with the students at Yale,
58:28
I just felt that I learned about some of the issues of what would make a scene work and not work. And then I think the uh has it helped me in other ways? Um, you know, I don't really I
58:41
don't know. I mean, for instance, the marriage of Bet and Bu the Matt character is very much me the
58:46
way that the uh Tom glass managerie is Tennessee Williams, but I never ever intended to play it.
58:53
I thought it would be too personal. Also, I I was when I wrote it uh well, I wrote it at the first
59:00
version of Eel and I just wasn't intending to play it. And uh it was um uh and and when
59:07
uh I uh I sort of approach I I sort of did a campaign to get Joe Pap to know me and like
59:14
me because he was so powerful in New York at the time. And the playrs he tended to you uh be drawn
59:21
to were very grungy and u and wore boots and and and same shepherdish and I thought I was harder
59:30
for him to get to like I felt like I was the prep school boy even though I didn't come for money but
59:37
um anyway um he did get to know me and and we we like one another and uh and we had many readings
59:44
of the marriage bon and and I did some rewrites for them and blah blah blah blah blah. And
59:49
um uh to my surprise when we decided to do it, he said to me, "You should play Matt." And I was just
59:55
totally startled. I never said anything about playing Matt, but he oddly had seen me do two
1:00:00
plays, one at the Young Parrots Festival. And he also told me that when he did I'm getting my act
1:00:06
together, taking on the royal role of the Rel Prior Nancy Ford musical, he said to Gretchen,
1:00:12
"You should play the lead," which he hadn't been intending to. And I had seen that. I thought, "Oh." Anyway, I was so scared when he told me I should play Matt. Um, because I thought if this
1:00:22
doesn't work, it's going to be very embarrassing. It'll seem like pathetic. You know, I'm dredging
1:00:27
up my sad story and presenting it to the world. And then I also thought, however, I can't believe
1:00:34
Joe Pap is saying star in your own play. How could I possibly not do that? Or or rather,
1:00:40
how could I not attempt to? The other thing about that was that when Jerry Zach who had now he
1:00:45
directed Sister Mary and a couple of other things of mine and he was directing this and I knew him well now and I did say to him and I really meant it I wanted him to know me and I said you know
1:00:54
I'm the playright first and if it's not working out you can fire me. So just know that. Um and so
1:01:01
uh so then he didn't fire me. Uh but but you know I I I guess it was just I just think knowing what
1:01:11
actors need from my own experience with them is helpful and it also helps me sometimes in
1:01:16
productions when an actor gets lost I always try to go through the director but sometimes
1:01:21
depending on the director they'll say well you can talk to that yourself and then I'll usually bring the director with me just so the actor knows that we're all in sync and talking about the same thing
1:01:30
but I guess that's how it's really helping. It's about time to open it to the audience,
1:01:36
but I want to ask you one question. Um, some people here know this. Uh, when Albby was here,
1:01:42
a student asked him a question which I just thought was a terrific question. You may hate it, but I've asked it to a lot of playwrights and a lot of writers. A student raised her hand and
1:01:52
said, "Mr. Alby, what terrifies you?" And I' I've often thought that was a really good question. So,
1:02:00
if you don't want to answer, you don't have to. But what terrifies you. Edward
1:02:07
said traffic in Houston, which wasn't much of an You haven't been in Houston. Oh, it's accurate,
1:02:14
but not very helpful. Um, well, you know, in a funny way, my answer is going to be a little
1:02:21
like his, but it'll probably sound more serious. I I'm actually afraid of um global warming. Uh
1:02:32
um out of control weather um our politics I feel like what's happened to the idea that there that
1:02:43
Congress can pass a law and the president can write a statement saying I don't have to follow this when I don't agree with it is astonishing to me. So I am um I don't know what to do about
1:02:54
that. So that really really frightens me. I think I think about more personal things. Um I have to
1:03:03
jump back in time, but uh and I'm my remarks for the master class tomorrow make reference to this,
1:03:12
but I I once shared with my dear late friend Wendy Werstein uh these fears I
1:03:18
had in college. When I was in college, I had three fears. I feared I might kill myself.
1:03:24
I feared I might uh have a nervous breakdown because my favorite aunt had had several. And
1:03:31
I feared I might move back home with my mother and lived there my entire life because well I
1:03:38
did fear it because my my grandmother lived with three of her five children.
1:03:44
They they one never left the one breakdowns and two returned after sadnesses in life and never
1:03:52
left and it was a very unhealthy thing and because I was an only child and one of the ones who moved
1:04:00
back my uncle said to me at some point when it was time to apply to colleges he said well of
1:04:06
course you'll have to go to Ruters because you can't leave your mother alone and I thought I
1:04:13
And I have to say uh because my mother's been such a wonderful influence in my life and uh she died when I was 30. Um that although there was part of her that would have liked me to
1:04:23
live with her my whole life, uh she was very um ambitious for me and uh value what was best for
1:04:36
me. I was very impressed that when I applied to colleges,
1:04:48
um anyway, she she chose the one that was furthest away from home. So,
1:04:54
I value that. Uh let's open it up. Can we have the lights? Uh Peter
1:05:00
has a microphone which he will thrust in your face. Please use it because
1:05:10
Yeah.
1:05:36
Um, question. Oh, okay. Uh, I think the question was, does writing comically about serious things
1:05:44
put you more in touch with your actual emotions? Is that a fair way of saying it?
1:05:54
And and and does that create deeper feeling in the audience? Uh, I hope so. I hope that that's true.
1:05:59
I I think it is somewhat. I I know that when I wrote uh the first one act of the marriage of Bet and Buu, which is my one autobiographical play and really is very close to my my parents uh
1:06:11
marriage. I mean, written in a somewhat absurdest style. However, it was my first play that's had
1:06:17
some empathy for the characters in it. I mean, my musicals certainly they were very light-hearted,
1:06:22
but my darker plays at at at Lake College and Yale. Um it it's funny. Uh well anyway
1:06:30
I started out I think with 50% of the school including most of my teachers liking my work
1:06:35
and 50% of the school was a little suspicious of me and and didn't know how to take my plays and
1:06:43
uh and I found that with audiences too for a long time but when I wrote the marriage of bet
1:06:50
and boo a lot of people who hadn't liked my play and I'm talking about the one act version that
1:06:55
um that I later expanded into the published a lot of audiences member a lot of people who hadn't
1:07:03
liked my work liked this play uh and and um I just sort of registered that um and I feel that well
1:07:15
that's in informed me and I now sometimes people have asked me if I self censor and
1:07:23
um I feel I don't mostly but I sometimes will think I some of my early plays when I uh my play
1:07:33
the nature herbs of the universe won the Smith College uh prize and um uh they did a production.
1:07:40
It was one of my first time seeing a production of uh my darker place and uh I found it hilarious
1:07:49
uh uh just seeing well this just because this poor woman the housewife Ellaner such terrible things
1:07:56
happen and her she has one violent and a violent husband and a religious fanatic violent husband.
1:08:02
And he when they disagreed with her, they would say, you know, shut up you troll. And they knock
1:08:07
her to the ground. And in this production, she was carrying a great big heavy frying pan all the time
1:08:12
because she was cooking eggs. And they throw her to the ground and the frying pan would fall and it
1:08:18
was played also by college students, which gave it a certain distance. Anyway, I found it hilarious.
1:08:24
And um and the the people working on it found it really But when I was the audience uh actually
1:08:31
the audience I it was a it was the action was in the middle and there was audience on either side.
1:08:37
So I was sitting on this side and my mother had brought some somewhat conservative friends of hers on the other side. And at the end of the play and it had gone well. The audience liked it mostly.
1:08:49
I looked across and her friends were standing up and they looked as if they had been slapped in the face repeatedly. It was just I'm afraid their look of shock made me inwardly laugh. But
1:09:01
um but as I went on, there were certain moments in some of my early plays that I would look back
1:09:14
at and go, you know what, that's a moment just so hard for the audience to take. And really,
1:09:21
I don't want to send the audience home hating their experience or that they stop listening to their I I feel like I' I've I've I've started to attune myself
1:09:30
a little more to audiences. Oh, and I'm sorry. I guess in a certain way, maybe that didn't answer your question about deep feeling. Um um but but I guess
1:09:38
I was going from the fact that the empathy in Marriage of Bet Lou had pleased more audiences. Um yes. And you know, I think part of my getting older, I mean, I I feel when I said
1:09:50
I wasn't angry writing Sister Mary, I think it's even partially because I was a little disconnected from my feelings. Um, and that oddly when Joe Pap asked me to be in marriage with Buu,
1:10:04
um, it was a very rich experience for me. But it was after that experience a fellow
1:10:13
actor in it turned out to also come from an alcoholic family. We to go to adult children alcoholics together. And I actually went through a period of many feelings coming up for me over
1:10:24
the next several years. And it was actually um a little bit like being on a roller coaster. I
1:10:29
found it scary. Um but I also felt that, you know, those feelings don't come up for me
1:10:38
unexpectedly anymore or very rarely. I feel like I felt them. Um so Yes, answer your question.
1:10:50
[Music] Just had a question about rewrites. Most of your stuff sounds so fresh and spontaneous and
1:10:58
uh uh you know many are not terribly plot driven. Uh um what is your experience in rewriting? Do you
1:11:07
do a lot? None. Um I I I'm happy to answer that question. Um, it's funny. I keep talking about
1:11:15
Noah Coward. He was sort of famous. I think he wrote Private Lives in the Weekend. So,
1:11:20
when I knowing that when I wrote some of my plays, I really wrote them quickly and on a
1:11:26
kind of tear and and uh and um that the nature and purpose of the universe that was such a lucky
1:11:32
play for me getting me into Yale and winning this prize um and actually going well off off Broadway
1:11:38
uh too. um was written in two sittings. I mean, it's only an hour long, but I I wrote it and I'd
1:11:46
written it after a two-year period of not writing. Uh and so it just sort of burst out of me and
1:11:52
um I I think I didn't rewrite it at all. Uh I think it was just that first draft. So, in a way,
1:12:00
I got spoiled and thought that that's just how I was always going to write. And that's not true.
1:12:05
As time went on, I did uh rewrite and I find you know mostly I like rewriting. I definitely
1:12:14
use a different part of my brain. I use a well what happens is I find it when I due to my nice
1:12:21
experience at Yale School of Drama where this every Wednesday we had this class called writer workshop where the first year actors were assigned with us all the playwrights every Wednesday and
1:12:31
they would uh rehearse slightly but do reading of a a full play sometimes. And I learned so
1:12:37
much from uh which actors did the best, what it is they did to make it uh make the the material
1:12:45
funny and and real and and which ones and it usually was if somebody exaggerated too much,
1:12:51
it made it less effective. But uh anyway, I just learned a lot from that. So when I would hear a first draft read by actors and especially as I I got older and had more productions to experience
1:13:02
to draw on, I love hearing it with actors aloud and then listening, you hear certain things and
1:13:09
and I love having a bit of an audience listening with me that you can feel, oh, their attention
1:13:17
is flagging there a little bit or uh or I'll get comments saying I didn't understand what happened
1:13:26
when that sort of thing. And uh so then I feel like there are problem areas that get flagged by
1:13:34
aloud and then especially if other parts have gone well, I feel very excited to go to the play and
1:13:41
go to the problem areas and go, how can I solve this? And and I guess it's the solving part of
1:13:47
my brain that feels different. Um the the writing is trickier because you're just starting from zero
1:13:54
and and it you need inspiration. Uh and I mostly write intuitively and then analyze later. So,
1:14:02
uh, I like I like rewriting and the times I've had to write in movies or TV where they often make you
1:14:09
rewrite many times and and you have many different executives giving you uh opinions. Um, it's
1:14:17
actually much harder than theater where they tend to be a little more gentle with the playwright and
1:14:24
uh there are fewer people talking to you. But uh I've found it I feel I've been a good student with
1:14:31
it because I've tried each time to even say if I get a a a note that I don't really agree with.
1:14:38
I try to find something about the note that I do agree with so that I because sometimes the
1:14:44
executives just want to be heard. So I I try to come up with a rewrite that sort of addresses that
1:14:52
and say and then I always do these cover letters that say and what I've done is X Y and Z because I
1:14:59
sort of want them to know that they've been heard any anyway. So so I I do that kind of thing. And
1:15:06
the only thing is every so often I've written a play where there's something at the core of it that I can't seem to solve. my play, Sex and Longing in New York, which got I didn't really
1:15:15
read the reviews, but I'm told they're so terrible and I and I once came across one by [Music] error.
1:15:23
So, but that play although I think there are many funny things in it. Um I I I watched it
1:15:30
with an audience after we opened many times and I just I felt that they they stayed with it for act
1:15:37
one and act two. It was a threeact play, but for act I do something in the storytelling and they're
1:15:43
restless and they're not happy. So, I didn't do that one right and couldn't seem to solve it.
1:15:52
Um, I' I've worked on quite a few productions of works that you've written and uh I thought
1:15:58
I guess my personal interpretation is kind of that um the characters are in very very serious situations and to them it's not funny at all. Um, but as a playwright I
1:16:08
found that sometimes the humor comes out of the that I had originally intended to write
1:16:13
as a serious play. So, I guess my question to you is uh does the comedy come from the drama or does the drama come from the comedy? And and when you write a play sometimes,
1:16:22
do you intend it to be a comedy or do you intend it to be a more serious show?
1:16:29
Huh. Um,
1:16:34
uh, mostly I've intended them to be comedies, but I've usually use the sort of catchall phrase in my
1:16:40
head of dark comedy, just meaning that the topics are sometimes serious. I mean, something like For
1:16:47
Whom the Southern Bell Toes, which is a parody of uh, The Glass Managerie, and which is a play
1:16:52
I love, is not a dark play. It's um, and and I wrote it in a really good mood, and I and I just
1:17:01
I'd seen 20 productions of Last Managerie was all um I I really do love that play. Um um but yeah,
1:17:11
usually I I do feel that I'm I'm writing a comedy. Although in some plays like Sister Mary, I gosh, I
1:17:16
found it so scary when Diane had her long serious speech. I'm not used to writing things that don't
1:17:22
have laughs in them. So when I would sit with the audience who was appropriately silent during her speech, I thought, "Oh dear, I can't tell. Are they bored? Are they hating that she's gone
1:17:32
serious?" I I still can't tell. Um uh or rather I shouldn't say that. I do know that there's certain
1:17:39
um there are certain things I write that that I'm aware that they're not funny. When I expanded the
1:17:44
marriage of Bet and Boo years after I'd done the one act at Yale, the first thing I wrote in the
1:17:53
expansion was Bet's talk on the telephone to her friend Bonnie from childhood where she calls to
1:18:00
tell her that she's had two still births, which is very painful for her. And in the first version,
1:18:08
um, the the death of the babies is presented in a eerie, strange way. The doctor comes out and says,
1:18:17
"It's dead. The baby's dead." And he drops it on the floor and there's a thud. Um, and I know that
1:18:23
doesn't sound funny, but in performance, it's usually it's usually funny, although then it
1:18:29
happens several times and it stops being funny. It's meant to stop being funny. And uh but this
1:18:35
scene on the phone was the first time I wrote a scene which was just saying to the audience,
1:18:41
I know it's not funny. I I know that Bets's in pain and it's really the scene is really about bed and pain and there aren't really laugh lines in it. Maybe slight ones, but not much. Um and then
1:18:52
I think the part that I didn't know how to answer, you said something about does the drama come from the comedy or the comedy come from the drama. Um I guess I don't know the answer to that. Sorry.
1:19:08
Do you ever worry, Chris, that the plays aren't taken seriously enough, that the comedy masks the
1:19:16
serious? Because I think we'd much rather laugh at something than take it seriously? You know,
1:19:22
I'm happy to say that I don't think that. And I think I I I I felt that both Sister Mary
1:19:29
Ignatius and the Marriage Betoo were treated very seriously at the same time they were acknowledged
1:19:35
for being mixtures of comedy. So, I'm happy to say I haven't felt that because I I do think
1:19:40
that can be true. And I remember Woody Allen rather famously said that when you do comedy,
1:19:47
you're sitting at the children's table and when you do serious things and and shortly after he said that, he made the movie Interiors, which is a good movie,
1:19:55
but I must say I I love Annie Hall more. Um, and I think Annie Hall, for instance, is a wonderful
1:20:01
comic movie that is though has wonderful rich things about relationships in it. So, anyway,
1:20:08
I'm happy to say I don't think that I think we have time for one more question. Which of your
1:20:14
plays is your favorite? And, uh, why is it your favorite, if you can answer that? Um,
1:20:24
uh, um, I was going to make a joke and say my favorite play is X because it got all A's in the
1:20:32
school and it made me so proud. Um was one does sometimes think of plays as one's children. Um
1:20:39
and Jackson was telling me that when Wendy Wasine was here, she said that bad reviews were so hard
1:20:45
to take because it was like one of your children is being criticized in the paper. Um you know,
1:20:54
I I used to say I I think I have trouble choosing one. I used to say The Marriage of Bet Lou was
1:21:00
my favorite play and and it still is one of my favorite plays. Uh just because I I I I really
1:21:07
like the way that the play mixes comedy and and seriousness and and empathy. Um and uh and
1:21:18
audiences normally receive it that way. And by the way, I'm having a revival of it in New York this
1:21:23
summer, the Roundabout Theater. I'm very excited. I love that first production so much. It's been
1:21:30
scary to me to ever think of another one. But uh it's so long ago now. It was done in 1985. Anyway,
1:21:38
Joan Allen was in it. Olympus, Mercedes Rule with the famous ones and wonderful actors and
1:21:45
many others. Um anyway, so Marriage Betton then I I really uh do have a very soft spot in my heart
1:21:52
for Sister Mary Ignatius. It was absolutely the play that jumped. I had had some success
1:21:59
with history of American film and then my mother had a long prolonged illness from cancer over a
1:22:05
couple of years and and I I really wasn't able to write and and during it I was and it was a
1:22:11
very upsetting time and I remember saying to my agent because I wasn't writing anything I said
1:22:17
uh how long c can I not write before I'm sort of forgotten in the New York theater world and She
1:22:27
said two years. But I actually love that she gave me a specific answer. Okay. But
1:22:37
uh it it was sort of within two years that I started writing Sister Mary Ignatius. And it was after it was after my mother's u long illness. And um anyway, I was just aware that religion was
1:22:50
a comfort to her and to her two sisters. And I sort of wished I could still believe in it. And I I end up thinking about how the church I grew up in had an answer for everything. So that
1:23:00
the big part of the title for me was explains it all for you. Um and so I really wanted someone to
1:23:06
come out. That's really why she starts talking about the sun and the moon and the earth and um um and um oh for what it's worth I'm just remembering that at EST when Diane Wuest came
1:23:18
who I adored and was in a couple of my plays and she was raised Catholic and when sister started saying first it was the sun and then the earth she dreams of laughter uh and and I'd also named
1:23:30
the character Diane for her uh because she in person can be very forthright and Anyway,
1:23:37
so Sister Mary really upped my career my career to such a degree. And then uh I have to say I'm very
1:23:44
fond of the recent play Miss Witherspoon, which uh those of you don't know is a is about a woman
1:23:50
who's committed suicide. She finds life scary and she's not been happy in relationship and she's in the nether world finding out that she's meant to be sent back to Earth and she doesn't want to go
1:24:00
back to Earth. She doesn't want to reincarnate. And it was such a challenge and interesting one
1:24:06
to write a play in the nether world. I thought, can I do it? I don't know how to do it. Um, and
1:24:12
anyway, I I'm I'm fond of that book. So, I guess there's three. I guess that's the next question.
1:24:37
Tomorrow, you'll be able to find out much more um and see some wonderful performance pieces
1:24:45
of plays and lots more. Uh as they go and get demiked, if I can ask our various playrs and
1:24:52
authors who are here who have books that we have out there for sale, if you can go to room FA114,
1:24:57
we have your station set up for you to do some signings. like and Christopher as soon as he's
1:25:04
dem he's going to be in the music hall which is FA 101 the one that's down the hall where we're
1:25:09
doing and we'll see you in the afternoon for workshops tonight at the gala and it's
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