 Good morning. Thank you for coming out of what started as a rainy Sunday. And maybe the sun will be out. We have the PA system on. We don't really need it in the size room, but it's an able domestic feed. We are a live streaming event on howlown.com slash TV. Thank you to Howlown for having us. That would basically work now. I, uh, let's get on with it. Welcome to the TV feed and the interview. Dr. Jackson, why don't you come to the conversation with our honoring Dr. Martin. That's what Donald's done in the past, and I've done a couple of things. That they go on a little too much like the previous one. Tell me about your boyhood, what's the first thing you wrote. And then what happened is the same thing is said in the presentation, I decided to take a slightly different path and sort of roam all over a number of areas that aren't chronological. I'm sure Donald will talk about some of these studies. I hope he will. But I hope he will cover some territory that we can tell you tonight. So I wanted to start asking Donald the question that involves a person who we all knew. Some of you know, I think he was the third person honored here while Bob Anderson. Many of us knew him. And Bob Anderson played a very interesting, significant role in Donald's career. And I wanted him to talk a little bit about that. I'm happy to do that. I went to art school. I was at Purchase College. I was a digital arts major. And I was very lucky to encounter wonderful men who were influential to me in different genres. And when I was a visual artist, I knew a man who used to be a jailer who was a sculptor and a printmaker. And Abe knew of my interest, my growing interest in playwriting. Because I had begun to write plays while I was an undergraduate at Purchase. I was 20 years old when I did my first play. And Abe was fascinated by my interest in it. I was very supportive of it. And one day he said to me, do you remember that Robert Anderson? And I said, of course, of course I remember that. Because Bob Anderson was a pianist, simply because he was an icon of American play. Of course, I was aware of it. I never sang for my father, which in its case was also quite an age ago. And I said, of course. He said, would you like to meet him? I said, yeah. So Abe orchestrated this meeting with me and Bob in Bob Sutton's place of apartment. I was so thrilled to be in the presence of an actual living, breathing, producing playwright. This would have been 1976 or 2007, something like that. And I was just so thrilled to be in his company. Bob was remarkably open to generous, with his time, with his anecdotes. He went out for coffee at the same dinner. He was a really sweet generous man. He had this wonderful story to tell. And then he's, at the end of this encounter, he said, would you... You know, I left him my agent. His agent was for legendary organ music. And I wasn't gonna pass that out. So he gave what he would, some of my early, early plays to me. And then he arranged to bring me to her. He was having a breakfast with the queen. And she was really lucky to me, considering that I was just this Fisher writer that Bob had taken under his wing. And, you know, she called me Deer and Darwin a lot. And he's also... So the purpose of that meeting was in the production. With Bob talking to her a little bit about the plays. And then she was going to call me once she read it. And Bob warned me that when she calls people on the telephone, she never says goodbye. She only means up to call me. And that was a crucial piece of information. Because she came up with it. I knew enough to take the person. But you're just... I'm only giving you that anecdote as an example of the kinds of experiences that a senior writer is a junior, not even junior, but a pleasure writer that needs a role. It makes you feel like a part of a tradition. It's part of an ongoing conversation. Yeah, and I've read, as you know, I've read some of the letters that Donald has given his papers to Yale. I didn't give him his papers. I wasn't going to make you sound personary. And I've read some of the letters that Bob wrote to you in the early years of your career. He went to see new plays and frequently would write you a letter about the Black people. Yeah, well, but it was constructive critique. And he was basically an appreciator of them. He was. I'm working on it, and Jeff, you see a Michael Wetter here at the birth of the plan about to say that it's a cold resting place. Which, it was just a feeling. It was an exercise. I read the two related ones, one of which was written with three words and was spoken by a homeless man. And it wasn't terribly long. Was he a good writer? And Bob really looked on. I don't remember his name. I remember he sent me a letter. And he always typed. What do you mean by that? And he wrote, and his response to the rest of this was really wild man. A very Bob kind of thing to say. A man who wore ties to all occasions. And he didn't get it, but he also, you know, he didn't denigrate it. He just kind of scratched his head with it. And then I think when I had a success in New York with collected stories, he wrote me this rapturous, this was 20 years ago, rapturous letter about how, thank God he's finally written a well-made book. It would probably be a good point here to ask you how you passed it on. In other words, how you, and now as a somewhat senior playwright, your role was to Bob Anderson to other players. It's, well, you know, as I said, I was very, very privileged to have wonderful men, you know, older men who fostered me as a young artist. Julius Nielke was one of these. Jay Nielke was the only teacher of dramatic literature at purchase. It was, you know, a course of playwright. And when I had this hitch to write for me, it was still kind of disneyed to me. It was Jay Nielke's office store that I knocked on to ask if he would sponsor me on a playwright. And Jay accepted me, the proposal was lacking. We met every week and I wrote ferociously for that semester, I was part of that. And at the end of the semester, there was an evaluation panel in the program. And there was a portion of this forum that was, do you recommend that this would continue in the school? And Jay wrote in capital letters, yes, with about six explanations. And that was an incredibly seminal moment for me. To get that kind of business evaluation. And that is something that I share with my students. I learned that there was no point of being a little older with young people or even a spectacle of where they might go. But if you suspect that there's talent there, by all means share that suspicion with them. It is so meaningful. So that because I have people like Jay, I have Jay, my art school mentor, who embraced young talent. It really provided me with searching about it as a role model, as a teacher. I've been teaching for 45 years now. Some of those years were taught what to expand teaching at the drama school, just a few years. But primarily I've been teaching under-graduates and female teachers at the department. So how, aside from the mentor aspects of teaching, has teaching helped you as a player? I think it continues to stimulate me. I, on my syllabus, I wrote the talk about it. And when I teach these plays, if you want to read them this year, and I get to bacteriously experience what's going on with those plays, which is the next step into experiencing something for the first time. You can't ever really replicate it all. Quick, through teaching you can to get to touch on what it was that excited me the first time. So I teach. I teach mostly contemporary American English plays, and I end the term with Alton. And it's always very thrown through to the unique use of students to these plays that they may have been exposed to as younger students, but may not have a future to be sent to the drama school. I read in an interview that you once gave that somebody asked you, what are the highlights of your career work? And you said one of the career highlights was writing the introduction to our town. Absolutely. And Donald and I share a wilder interest I have to admit. And could you talk a little bit about why it's a career highlight and what you value so much in that play? Well, you know, my wife and I saw a bit of great emotional production. I think it was in, you know, in the 80s. It's baldy gray. It's baldy gray as per state of mind. The only scene was the alley. And it was stunning. It was an absolute stunning play. I think that's available on some sort of video. It is. With Eric Stolz and Alton and me. I believe that's the one. And I have been exposed to Alton as a high schooler, and I had seen student productions, and I was very hoping, and very sort of sentimental, Norman Rockwell, and Americana. And when I saw that great emotional production, he was devastated. And I went home and I looked at my copy of that, and of course I had. Well, I wanted to see what Greg had done differently with you. What have you caught? What have you changed? Nothing. I changed. That was the lesson. And to be exposed to something to a work of art like Alton, which is truly fine, when you're too young to appreciate its greatness, there's a gift to be had in that. Because you can rediscover a great work of art many times during your life. When you were at different points in your own journey, and you have different points of reference to relate to the work of art. So I guess my affection for Wilder was known to Tappin Wilder, he actually was born. And Tappin Wilder, who's become a friend of the white man, invited me to be part of Supposing the Gale. You must be the Gale. John Ware. John Ware and Keith Wren, and I was thrilled to be a part of our discussion. And then shortly thereafter, the Wilder plays were going to be reempted by Parker Collins. All of the work. The entire canon of Wilder. His lesson in novels and all of the plays were being reissued. And he wanted part of Tappin's pitch to Parker Collins with it. Each of these volumes would be introduced by a different contemporary way. And Tappin told me one day, and he said, I want you to write me a production to the skin of our teeth. And I said, I want you to be the screenwriter. It's not one of my favorites. And I reread it, and I thought, I shouldn't write a business production. It's a whole local business production. It's much more something that she would have been influenced by than I. So he said, oh, what a great idea. And I said, well, I guess I should talk myself out of the job. Well, you know, I was going to ask you if you wanted a new avatar. I said, yes, I would love to do an avatar. And that, you know, just to be going to this way by Tappin was such a thrill. And of course, I clutched, like, paralyzed. I'm not going to do this. I am not worthy. But I did find a way into it, and I'm very proud of that introduction. And I've seen emails all the time to comment on that introduction. But that was really such a validated moment to see. To even have my being in the same breath with while it was an extraordinary experience. To go back to the beginning, do you think there's some relationship of, I don't know whether you remember this, but when Wilson started as a visual artist, a number of writers had started with it. And I wonder whether you see any relationship between your origins as a visual artist and now as a writer. I don't know. I always thought visually. I like looking at pictorial guidelines rather than written instructions. When I imagine you play, sometimes it's just a person sitting and a person standing. But I think that's something always to visualize what the configuration of people on stage might be. I do know that the approach that I take to writing is very similar to the approach that I take to drawing. And that is, and that was my main pursuit as an artist. Drawing and practice is not good. I drew every day, hours a day, it was a really wonderful time in my life. But my approach to drawing was that I might get sort of a big picture now, sort of a big mess and then erase and erase and refine and refine. And that's very much the approach that I take to play. I start out with very messy, very full first drafts. And then I pull back into the drafts. It's almost as sculptural. John Hollanford said at one point that he, when he first began writing plays, he had a great interest in the posters. I was going to ask, you have that visual sense. You have said once that some of the plays come from the feeling of disgust. Disquiet, I'm sorry. Sorry about that. Well, Bobby said, I don't think it was original with him. I think he was quoting somebody else. He said, write about what bugs. And that's very similar to this. But where do the plays come from? Is it always a feeling of disgust? Can you think of a character? I'm sure it's different with different plays, but can you talk about some of the plays and where they come from? Well, they come from all different places. That's the thing. When I'm talking to young writers and my students, they say, how do you get ideas? Well, the idea is sort of present themselves. And they present themselves in the form of something you can't stop thinking about. Which is not the same as having an idea. And, you know, we've been with friends for 35 years. And at the time that I was writing we were not friends. And we were suddenly experiencing a phenomenon of couples like us who were suddenly imploding all around us. We were just approaching one another in a firestorm. And just enduring and being kind of mystified and gobsmacked by what was happening around us, I decided it wasn't funny. So many couples that we were part of our social lives that we somehow can be there forever in the same role, they were suddenly gone. And that's where it's been a defense to me. Something like something like the stories that came out of a couple of things they converged Debbie and I made yesterday but I think I'm about to tell the story that I was going to tell you in private. Which is that two incidents occurred that contributed to collective stories which is that an older woman writer and a younger woman writer. And I knew it was going to be a two-handerer and I knew it was going to be a kind of generational study about influence and surrogate parenting and all of that. And I became very fascinated by a controversy that was raging in the literary world that involved the short story writing David Leavitt and Steven Spender The Poetry of the Moon David Leavitt is a I don't know if you don't know maybe he's in his 50s David is an outlet for a homosexual writer who decided that he was not only for words of his name, not halfway he decided that he was going to take a chapter from Steven Spender's What a Biography And a veil rendering of a love affair that Spender had during the Spanish Civil War But because of the constraints of the mores at the time it was not a very candid picture according to David Leavitt So what he did was he wrote a novel called I think it's called Wild English Slap I think he's with the Robert Kennedy book John Kennedy Why This is Wild Which is already for somebody else Anyway, and in that novel Leavitt was very explicit in the sexual relationship with Steven Spender who was still alive took terrible objections to this and took Leavitt's Courtney and succeeded in getting portions of the novel excavated in the same month in our past year Anyway, I was really fascinated by some of the aspects of this story And around the same time I experienced my own kind of skirmish with a writer I had wanted Arthur Miller I wrote and played Mr. Miller took exceptions who I would write and play and he was very rejected I believe he's never read it but his agent began to make very bellicose noises and in fact told me that this would have been on 1989 that he can't believe that he produced this play and they called me I said why don't you just change the title of this play I said, I'm not changing the title of this play The title of the movie the play is about the influence of Miller's play on me and might also be Don Mitchell, an 11 year old boy who is exposed to that facility for the first time which in my case was the television production of E.J. Kovner and George C. Williams which had a profound effect on my little psyche because I think it's a bright little book before I recognized my family and it was terrifying I felt very guilty about it and my way of assimilating that was to write a musical a parody of Jefferson's called Willy with an exclamation I really did that then years later years and years later when my father died and I was telling my wife stories of my childhood and I realized that I had more family stories to mine and it involved a certain chapter in my childhood growing up in the housing project my father was a salesman I had one of two sons doing that and I began to write a play that took place in 1965 when I was 11 years old and the death of a salesman was a presence in that apartment I just could not shape it so in my attempt to write about it how could I not acknowledge the influence of the world I had to otherwise it would have been disingenuous it would have been unfinished so I decided I was going to use my monobiography in that I would have a 11 year old Mitchell write a musical comedy version of Death of the Second Whole Movie except we would get to see it so what comes out of Death of the Second Whole Movie is after a horrifying encounter between a believer at salesman's father and his older son who was just in Bar Mitzvah the father has to negotiate a way to get the Bar Mitzvah money that the boys swore that day in order to pay for the Bar Mitzvah something the old boy didn't know was part of the movie and it's a caramel scene and it becomes a really cataclysmic moment in the life of my baby family and the only place to go actually I wasn't into song so there's a ten minute musical that I wrote with David Shire I did the lyrics of the music of this little capsule of really it burst out of this it burst out of this the climactic scene in the second half anyway Miller was a qualified very ideal I don't even know how to be new but David was killed by Miller who really dismissed it other reviews were kind of extraordinary but he knew how to be new and kind of dissolved it a couple of reviews after that Lin Meadow produced I'm not only for this because I'm still actually interested Lin Meadow produced Sinon 3 a play that began in South West Africa and in Frank Richie's review of Sinon's scene he referred to Mr. Marnie's last Darren in the play The London Family Rich was not the N.F.H. critic he did but in his review of Sinon's scene which was a raid and which was transformed it was the great time that I hooked at The London Family in three years earlier with the use of the word Darren and there was this sudden illusion about the play and Lin Meadow said to me the morning after this crime comes over in the silence and you don't know what to think about it when you want it again so it was done in 1993 Lin herself directed it to U of 3 on a center across those steps with Christine Borenstein and Peter Friedman on the main stage of the N.F.H. Sinon Center it was an exclusive production that was going to be produced Lin received a letter from Arthur Hill that said this is a pretty standard of paraphrase because I never read this multiple times he said when you produce this the first time and this is what he said when you produce this the first time I thought it would simply go away that you were producing it again and I find it unconscionable that's pretty harsh pretty harsh coming from a man I admired his work I admired his work so much to me but it was quite a stunning work so I'm telling you that very personal story as an illustration of the kind of disquiet that produces a quiet because what happened was with the convergence of my own experience with influence and David Webber's experience with influence and David I don't know I feel like maybe just to share through the trade sector between those two things I got a play out and a play on their product but I couldn't have written and I think if I hadn't been felt that low by Sinon I had admired it well I think now is the time I've just gotten a call from the M. Tom Checkout at least on your case I was going to ask you apropos of collected stories and also apropos of Coney Island and Christmas what's the Grace Paley thing that you seem to have going because a lot of people have seen in collected stories that that older writer I mean this is unfair they have suggested that they are a certain resemblance to the who I knew I don't know is there an interest there sure yeah I discovered Grace Paley in high school I love Grace Paley's stories what was notable about Grace that I quoted this for one conversation I had that she told me about she she only worked for school she never wrote a novel she never took that step and I found that a really fascinating thing and she was utterly a piece of the world she was not played by and I I thought that was a really interesting trace in a character I was playing so that if if I borrowed from Grace she was a teacher she was a certain generation she was Jewish and she only worked short stories aside from that I didn't know Grace at the time I only sort of knew the CD that I'm describing to you so that when I was creating a role of Grace Paley but produced in Lisa Morrison a budding novel and what would that do in the dynamic of a mentor who carved out a niche for herself in a very specific genre who then produces something that is aspiring to that which she has never viewed of others that was the Grace Paley isn't she a I don't know from young Christmas it's based on a Grace Paley short story called The Loudest Voice and coming out of the Christmas can out of a discussion I have with my great dear friend Bill Kates who I met with Kevin Platt he also bought my handkerchief yes and directed I know something about it and Bill he called me one day and said how do you like to write us a Christmas show? I said Bob it's nice to report you're working for a Christmas show I said if I'm going to write you a Christmas show it's going to be a Jewish Christmas show and he said Grace and I said what am I going to do with that I accepted this commission for a Jewish Christmas show and I got an idea I remembered what was one of the thunderbolt moments I remembered a short story by Grace Paley The Loudest Voice and it was set in Depression era and in it Shirley Brown was the first generation American is chosen by her drama teacher to be the voice of Jesus in the school play because she had the loudest voice and it's a very slender story but I thought what a delicious Christmas show was so until I accepted this commission from my friends because that's okay and the other directive I got from Gilbert you know if you want to put an ice skating rink I want this to be big of course it's gotten one production in life but anyway when I rediscovered The Loudest Voice it was one of those adaptation experiences I had every now and then I knew I wanted to do this and I decided to play with the things we made up of adults playing children doing a Christmas party which turned out to be very delicious for actors and but it became a larger play about assimilation and the immigrant culture the American dream and all of that it was because I remember that story she's a great play that's why I wanted to bring her into the conversation she's not exactly also the interesting project there's one online you can find Grace reading The Loudest Voice oh and Grace Perry Grace Perry who I knew pretty well is the epitome of a writer who you should hear reading her work and the voice in her stories is Grace's voice oh it's still some writers have great difficulty reading their own work Grace was wonderful oh and Linda London does does a selective source I want to quote something to you that I heard you say once and so approximate something I believe about theater that I wanted to hear you respond to in behavior and subtext in things that are not said that are expressed through behavior what catches me about that is so many times you see theatrical moments that are not yet that are you could make them a novel could make them a lot of them and so many times playwrights theater people forget that it is what you see it is theater not I'm an English professor but it's not just about language it's about behavior and it's also watching the country house the other night it was wonderful to see so many moments where what wasn't said or what was said didn't by any means cover the whole so is that a conscious thing or do you think it's just more than into your way of writing I think it probably is my way of writing it's something I try to to instill in my students is the importance of conflict that you need conflict and the thing about drama is that people don't always say it except maybe in some way but people often say indirection they go through different strategies to achieve what they want it's not what's spoken of it's what is subversive what is subterranean that is really the story behind the words and I find that you don't always find that much more interesting I often think that writers don't give the audience enough credit that you don't have to spell things out we all do and our daily lives is exactly what you're describing we all recognize it and why aren't we given the opportunity to recognize that on stage we can do it talk a little bit about I mean the Coney Island Christmas story makes me wonder whether there's a different process when somebody assigns you something as opposed to something that you come up with on your own the Gilcate example is one example but you've also done a number of adaptations you've done some screenplays how are those processes all different? I enjoy that it's almost a rescue for my own fortune cycle because I'm able to use my skills as a dramatist in a different way problems often though it's not the same it doesn't mean I don't care about it as much it's easier access to my skills as a dramatist than I do as a playwright and it's enjoyable you know I have accepted commissions over the years that were specific commissions I've also accepted commissions that will be one next book you know with the specific commissions because South Coast Repertory Commission needs to write a play for their theater for young audiences series I used to write Shipwrecked and Entertainment which turned into a very sophisticated play for children so much so that they put them in a deep season on their new stage I've seen it as an adult well exactly that's the thing but it's a play for all ages it's a point that I would not have written had I not received the commission to write a play for young audiences it's the way the play evolved years and years ago Armin Brown at Longwood asked me to write an adaptation for Longwood and I decided to adapt a play by Sean Hatch a British classic for Sean Hatch called God Adventures which was from 1906 and I had read that music through my friend Susan Wilson who asked me to help her with a play about a Jewish project that was turned into century and in my research for Susan many many years ago I came upon a play called God Adventures which is about a Jewish prophet who in in his basement has a prophet and upstairs he has his 217 year old brother but what he doesn't know is that his 17 year old brother is having a lot of love affairs with one of the girls in his stable a shunting play a shunting play because it was imminent of nice and exotic culture anyway so Armin commissioned a play and I decided I wanted to try one of them I never would have written that you know my take on it was very different I said it in America in 1903 and it's a very different kind of play but my point is that I would not have written that talk a little bit as we talked to people last night about the U.S.S. idea that you have now that's a good example of exactly what they're talking about this is so not even half-baked well that's an interesting answer how you went from what it is to what you could do with it you don't mind talking about it well it's only been a streamed line about the American world you don't want to talk about it I think it's in America they're insane but just to be very specific you know can I tell you about a different story that you've already made on Saturday okay that's an interesting example that's out of the Vatican the other project we discussed last night because I know it isn't in the little review which figures in a story that I just said about the obscenity of the trial surrounding this that's only that someone said it was plastic but I just that's coming out a lot it's called the end of the tour and the origin of that is that my manager, my longtime manager David Panthers sent me a book that had come his way although of course you might have been coming yourself a little trick that David Foster was David Lipsky and Cantor sent this to me I should explain that this book although of course you might have been coming yourself is a transcription that David Lipsky has put together a book for one and with five big conversations he had with Wallace in 1996 when he was sent by Rolling Stone the interview was just as intimate as his main focus hit the scene and Cantor sent me this book and said take a look at it if you want to play with it and I started reading it and I got very excited because I saw a movie I saw a road picture and it just excited me from that but I said David I can't afford to write this on spec so we've got to get some seed management and he was able to do it because someone was able to pay me a little bit to write it and the story is basically about these two young men one is 34 David Foster Wallace who will kill himself in 12 years who is to this day a comic figure in American literature and David Lipsky who is a fine fiction and nonfiction writer but was 30 years old and still very much up and coming and Cantor so you can begin to see that there are certain themes that I'm interested in that for me converges where I was sent Lipsky's book and when I did that I became very exhilarated at how to put it all together taking a 300 pages transfer and carving on a matter of it using interviews that I've been through that for David Lipsky to fill in the blanks and to find the subtext because there is no subtext to do with that and the transcript but finding the subtext gave me an amateur on which to fill a story many of the, most of the words in this I can tell you are Wallace's enemies but I hope I've done a subversive enough work of injecting my own transitions and conversations with you so you don't see where Marguerite is beginning to invade me how is writing one-on-one but how is screenwriting different than playwriting? Well screenwriting, in the kind of playwriting I do I aspire to a kind of seamless conversation it's natural I have certain beats that I want to include but I don't want you to ever see the work of Lipsky's beats together I want it to be as seamless as possible so that when we arise and we know how do we get there much of it occurs in the real conversation in film you don't have the same constraints of time that you do on stage because in film if you want to change the subject you cut you're in the next piece you don't have to create the transitions to the next piece because film isn't even there yet and film is also a much less taller medium you really can't sit there for minutes on end although I had a great time with the fact that the editor was telling me to sing which is very unusual you should hire your former Yale student to direct your screenwriting not the same way but you don't have the same narrative constraints you're doing and having your former student as the director publishes an asset because I was going to ask you how faithful have they been to what they've set out to do to present the director's meetings the director at the end of the tour is James Consult he's gotten a lot of attention in recent years because he's directed a movie called Smash with Aaron Faulk and Breaking Bad and then a year or two later another hit of Sundance for the spectacular now with Shannon and William Wallace Teller and Kyle Chandler and James was my student who was 19 and he kept in touch and when I finished the Wallace screenplay I asked my producer to let me send it to him and he responded to the overnight and when I saw the rough cut of the movie last summer I was moved because what I saw on screen was what I wrote and it's not the same as hearing my words it was the movie I wrote you know what I mean at least it really is a different because I saw it in a reference screenplay it wasn't exactly the movie I wrote it's my words but that's certainly not how I saw it let's talk a little bit about the director playwright relationship here we've had the luxury the pleasure of working with one director a great deal of his time what makes that relationship with the Aesolven so good have you experienced situations that aren't so good with the out name games and what okay we've already libeled on the mill or we can deal with it it's not here it's not here you know I'm sort of a serial monogamous because your director your director's not always available so I have to have a few directors on a show and when I have a successful collaboration I want to work with that director what makes this a successful collaboration where I feel that what I'm doing is being served as opposed to being in a person they're being a lack of trust in what I'm in the director's in which case the director feels that he has to encode his own vision on something that he has spent more of a rigorous time with he could sail way easier with somebody like Dan he's been working for multiple iterations of production but he's been working together steadily since the 19th and the thing about Dan and I was talking for the other day in a discussion about the way I was working and the precision in the script of where the overlap occurred and that's something that Mario can do this and you can really to write about it Dan is in this military about this overlapping in the wrong place you gotta hear that word it's Dan gotta hear what word you're coming into soon and we're not hearing the other ones who do it after that slash you know as they're here so the way and I'm using the notation as an example how when you write a play you're really providing a kind of sheet music when you're conducted as a director and with the musicality that exists in some way in most writing you want the director to conduct it faithfully without reinterpreting it but to interpret it for the sake not reinterpreting it for his or her vision so yes Dan is militant about this there's kinds of moments and I cherish that kind of fidelity I seem to be quoting Bob Anderson continually in this session but he used to say these words are tested percent and you know what he was saying is you know if you change them that you're terrible but let's add the final ingredient to the whole thing pretty a couple of things first of all is it fair to say that you are not in your earliest place reading with tremendous enthusiasm but and not the only playwright who has succeeded how does that affect you or did it affect you I mean it obviously affected your livelihood but I'm very delighted and you'll perverse to the trajectory of what you're testing I think it's a good test I don't really have it's really been quite a lot I think that now in my experience of teaching young people despite too much and for this place that early success and I can speak through personal experience that some of the best minds in my generation who experienced early success and we're not able to do the best work because they already were limited I struggled for recognition for a period of years I had the misfortune of having Frank Rich come to review a very early play of mine that he should not have seen and that gave me a very disparaging, very psychically managing review which kind of set the course for the next decade of my career in that when he reviewed 50 children which was kind of a prototypical play for collective stories that turned out I wrote 50 children it was pretty cinematic review for my first film because Frank Rich was such a disparaging review I was kind of shell shocked that my next time which was when Joe Pao could be standing two months six months later and Joe, God, wasn't really much of a play and was really a tremendous champion had great pilots for the play and for me and we were given a chorus for that, a choral it was just a gorgeous experience and Frank Rich really liked it and of course it was quite disappointing because I thought it was going to feed back for it wasn't then a few months after that and mind you my career was filled in at this point because I was getting the recognition in literary offices to release as a writer to watch and to be supported and all of that and what's happening but by 1985 my first production to have theatre was as faithful as one of this picture and this was all my view in the space of about 14 months between 50 children and my third production of what's on this picture and there were so many things going for that the great amount of economists it was mainly about the work very good but it wasn't working and I knew it wasn't working and I also had a strong strong sense of who I was and what my capacity was for yet another rejection because I thought I was certain that I would be able to do that for something I thought wasn't there yet it wasn't good enough so when I was being exposed to the world where it wasn't good enough I didn't have to be kind of suicidal so I did something in a young unproven playwrights for a very reason which is I exercised my problem and I called on the critics which was a huge contributor for them to use it wasn't the most popular decision at Manhattan Theatre Club where I said I don't want to do it which meant we played our subscription run to Manhattan Theatre Club and I feel to this day that if I had left that open I wouldn't be sitting here I don't think I could have recovered from yet another slap I don't think I could have gone to Los Angeles I think I would have gone very long but that isn't the life I'm talking about so I think I'd save my career had you ever learned anything I'd learned about the importance of critics I'd learned about the importance of critics who do they have to tell you they have to tell you well you know you work with but you're a critic of various behaviors about who are the six of them you know when they say you're a critic critics don't close plays for this reason they know and critics certainly can do so yes I do recognize the order of power that's one critic in America whoever it is and are you it's the answer as we said yesterday it's a really sad thing that not only kind of critic in New York sync a play in New York but it can have a tremendous effect on whether that play gets done elsewhere and as we said yesterday elsewhere is where theater is in this country not necessarily in New York that's right you're absolutely right if you don't get that validation in New York for play regional theaters will not look at it on the other hand and this is a young thing that was added in this class about a year and a half ago I played in my old apartment it was just very it's had a very checkered career but it was revived by a young director in New York and had that he did a lovely job for it and I received the best reviews in my career for this very obscure play of mine and a great review in New York Times did nothing to encourage people in New York to get this play zero well as we said I hope that the way Country House was treated in New York doesn't make it harder to do around the country that's a play that you see as we all know I think it's time now to open it up to other questions that you might have now that I've overstepped my bounds with David and with all of the management today I'm sure you know it's not always going to be a big play I heard a great line that we'll always have you I'm sure and I've had some wonderful excuses where it is like a nuclear winter in February a lot of plays from the mad festivals have done extremely well thanks I'm writing a new play that I think is a play I'm not sure yet it's Pages and I'm actually doing my first book of Broadway musical for Father of the Bride there's one with a nice little music and this movie has occupied a lot of money for the last several months now that it's finally being launched Neal Sets I've adapted Joe McChennan's novel Neal Sets as in which we have the fate of which is in television I can say that it's not David yet I don't know I don't know what's going on but I'm very proud of that adaptation I had a wonderful time I don't even know that novel it's a big dense sprawling novel which if you now are familiar with my work you know that I tend to write this chamber piece so being given a book of Neal Sets for Dad which is this piece this huge canvas I hope it will be wonderful I hope they will I don't know either Some of my favorite scenes and stories are in Brooklyn Boy when you have the Eric Weiss character who is having his novel kind of spawned in the screenplay go to Hollywood and have this kind of devastating encounter with his producer who says that he needs to make everything Jewish pray and that he needs to screenplay and then the producer decides I don't know who's an actor but it seems incredible to be David but it's very funny and yet I feel that that's got to come from some experiences that didn't burn yourself in Hollywood and yet when you're talking now about your experience as a screenwriter it seems to really understand the kind of way it comes to being so much more positive I wonder if you can talk about that as a kind of transition or in fact it really was a kind of disillusion in all the centers of more disillusion and experience in your first work in Hollywood Well I mean just to put it in perspective at the end of the tour it was an interplay in the film I received no studio needs whatsoever I used to see my directors and they were all very smart and they all respected the integrity of the script they didn't want to turn into something that positive or shouldn't be When Cyan scene was my breakthrough in 1922 and I was making the rounds I was suddenly having readings and it was really interesting Cyan scene I had a memorable where Cyan scenes about a Jewish American painter who re-encounters the college news and I remember he was a studio secretary who loved my voice my voice and as she said does he have to be a painter? I said she said does he have to be Jewish? and I said he does that's the story what I am telling you didn't go much beyond that but I mean the scene in Brooklyn board obviously but you know the movie is so confounding that yes I did like that my experiences in Hollywood I think are very typical I don't want you to suggest that I be symbol value or ghettoized I don't want you to suggest that at all but for the experience I am still basking the sense of kind of film of being a writer so beautiful it's a wonderful piece of time myself I think the writing screenplay is mainly a little more deep than normal in my playwriting and I don't mean just in terms of the economy of language of incident possibility I think being a writer is my screenplay my film scenes tend to have shape they are not just snippets they are little events that respond to that and I think that part of my work you mean you tend to write film seemingly we should not to say they are not cinematic but you know within a scene I feel like a button I use it by any chance I was actually going to ask a similar question you feel your plays have become more cinematic as it is all the writing things do you feel more I mean I I've seen and read a lot of your plays have they always jumped around in time always jumped around in location in these three ways some of the more recent ones and you always can see this theater as malleable as it I think in the sight of the scene which is a play that does jump around that's what I was thinking that is a relatively recent play 20 years didn't occur I don't think so I don't think I was playing with the temporal quality of the plays so much when I sight of the scene began as a very difficult part to read and what I was doing there consciously was a jumping chronology I just wanted to break scenes and then jump over them it turned out to be very arbitrary and I was just using it I've been practicing and I invented it but then I simplified that idea and the timeline is very judiciously would you say in a situation like that the story the circumstances dictate the form rather than the form not being imposed on the story absolutely and that's something I continually explain in the series how do I explain it everybody is whatever what's the story well I don't know yet well figure out what the story is and then we'll figure out how to tell it but don't come up with a conceit and then try to put a story in the conceit because it's not going to work and I think that those kinds of lessons I think are really valuable are things I've learned over the years and I hope I'm saving people years of their huh we got a question from off of Twitter Ellen Ronnie and she asks what current playwrights do you admire okay it's working the Twitter is working the the I okay why don't we just list them all for a minute naming her's on Annie Baker is Steven Pound Sam Hunter Brandon and there is a phenomenal explosion I'm feeling very optimistic and my past I do think it is just a God and you know each year when I meet my students for the first time and here we are these people looking at their parents and I said why are you here why are you in a playwright like that ladies and yet I'm always heartened by the enthusiasm and passion and this undying interest in what is supposed to be a dying profession so you know I do have something I absolutely do can you teach playwrights no you can teach inspiration you can teach I mean what I'm doing in my syllabus is I share plays as I said that I love and I love talking about and that I was exhibited about and I was first time sure about how to do this and if I can demonstrate to my students what is exciting about this what stimulates me then maybe maybe it begins to serve in the urban sense the possibilities you can't use and so what is the best approach for you when a student comes to play how do you see yourself I mean I think the temptation of academics is always to write play they want what do you see your function I bring you my play you see some talent what do you see your function is in dealing with you if you want to teach yourself well maybe to borrow from a character like David Lee's governor I ask them questions I ask questions I don't what is the event of your play and I don't know and well you need an event and then to describe what is an event you might get an example of what the event is and I may have discussed it for some who are present here that's smaller than you can have an afternoon when I ask what is the event of having an afternoon when somebody will say it's Big Daddy's birthday I go no that's not changing the event is it's Big Daddy's last birthday and the fact that Big Daddy got this diagnosis caught on over the procedures that information and the fact that it's a last data is what infuses that play in such hard states that everyone on the play is rather that's what makes it an exciting play if it was simply his birthday party they would have candles in which it would be better so figure out what is the what is the climate that exists in which the play occurs yeah one of the things I like to say to students is that the play is just about what it's about it's not really in other words it's got to do about more than what it's about and that is another way of saying what you're saying when a long-gauge journey you're not it's not just about a family's day it's about a lot of other things and plays that tend to not work new plays, young plays often about I once saw a play about a minor league basketball team in Ohio before I would see it I said to myself it's a great occasion for a kind of well-turned-out to be about a minor league basketball team in Ohio there's no resonance there's no other subject and that's another way of saying it's not the plot it's not what happens what's behind it that's it yeah curious question one play one play right for the rest of your life who is it one play one play right I'm vicious I guess I would have to that would be one play but then you get to come out yeah I was at part of the drama conference a couple weeks ago and the interviewer at the end of the interview asked 10 questions to which the person David was there and asked him 10 questions to which he could only answer very briefly and one of them was that and the other was what was the first play you saw the first play I saw the first straight play I knew that and that was truly a watershed moment like the first 9 years of my life that came as part of what in family war became what we did all the time which in fact in other languages twice which was to spend a week in New York and see the 9 shows we would take the G train from Coney Island to the state of Chief Hotel in Midtown and that's when the middle class family could afford to go to the theater even if we sat on the last row of the balcony we could get in to see something but that is not true anymore there's no way to do it but her purpose of 1000 phones I had a question about that it's not that I left the theater as a playwright but I experienced life here in the last year there was so many toxic things my little mind made itself it stayed with me and then of course how many years later 30 years later my Broadway premiere also my debacle her gardener sitting behind me on an opening night and when the play was over and it was not a good direction her enormous hands grabbed my shoulder and it was such a thunderbolt and it really was another one of the 10 questions I had to bring down of course I left the sheet back in the hotel was if you had to write or play for a single actor or actress who would it be? well it's so obvious but I would fluctuate cheese cheese I can bring her back to the theater that would be once bold another question was and maybe you already answered this what is the play you wish you'd written in the beginning? oh I see those things I'm trying to think I thought you were going to say that but that's too much I can tell you the first thing that comes to mind is the screenplay when I saw the screenplay in the way it was I loved that movie and I wish I had written the screenplay and I wrote to him about that but I didn't know and I said this doesn't happen to me a lot before and what moved me so much about Noah's movie was the family he depicted this horribly dysfunctional family that he depicted living in Park Slope was the very family I always aspired to be a part of growing up and growing up that's right and so I really wanted that screenplay there's a question from the web how long does it take you to write a play including rewrites? John Gray used to say it took him 53 years to write 60 degrees of separation it really does vary by my friend and colleague Candace Chappelle Candace was present literally present at the creation of a collected story when it was 15 pages and 8 days later I had collected stories and do you use readings to help you? I love readings I rely on readings my friends, Michael and Jeff they're saying that we created a group many many years it was 37 years ago we made each other's work every Monday night for almost a month and a year and that really was my graduate school education learning how to hear the work learning how to respond to the work learning how to filter feedback that you get and learning to be your best friend there's nothing like hearing it I'm always telling young writers if you don't have such a group you must create such a group because if you're going to be a playwright it's not the same as being a fiction writer because fiction will exist in their head plays need actors they need to be given voice otherwise they're not playwrights they're stress so until you can hear it you don't really understand what you have and what I've come to do over the years is I've become much precious about what I have so with that experience I had at some things with Kansas president for collecting stories I will just hear whatever I have when I was working on Timespan still I had 40 pages Bill Kates invited me to the deaf to have a reading of the 40 pages and they weren't even consecutive pages they were just pages out of there and then I had another reading of the first act and another reading of the first draft and another reading of the video so it takes years because my wall would be great to respond to how low does it take but yes I do use these and do you use dramaturgs ever? I use dramaturgs one of my trusted friends and colleagues is Gerard Patch who I've been a success director in many years ago I use a dramaturg How much did the plays change let's say from Evening Rivers or in later stages have you made expensive changes in play or any changes? I do, I certainly have changes because I know I'm a reading aspect of development of my own work most of my work is structural work so I'm not suddenly throwing these things at my own actors I try to remember what you did and it made me very anxious my beloved colleagues put their thumbs on that kind of anxiety I do not it makes me very very anxious I like to have my armatures set on day one however I will have a subsequent production as I did with time stands during the Country House and Birkenburg where we began in California before coming to New York and with time stands still I cut scenes out by the time of that I cut about 40 minutes of that play between LA and New York the Country House I rewrote the beginning of the second half of the play in New York but I didn't attempt to do it while playing in them Have you ever where do those changes come from are they suggested by directors or are they suggested by an actor or Lynn or somebody else everybody yes I love actors I love working with actors just to be a little anecdote in the Country House Eric Lyons played the role of the lawyer and we were in rehearsal and Eric was confronted with his friend Michael who he had never seen in a while he was getting a lot of shit from this mustache and Eric said shouldn't I say something I haven't seen in New York and I said you know I just improvised it so in the rehearsal he said where the fuck did this come from and I said okay into the text there is that's just an example of what a successful collaboration should be like Have you ever I've heard playwrights say this so I'm asking you have you ever been surprised by a performance in other words what kind of character did you create that you don't normally way differently from the way that you had invested in that success Lynn Lyons of Paris to see Brooklyn Boy and it was a very different kind of production it was very French it was the block smoking and it was much more style and yes granted I was nice to be French but I certainly recognized my value and it worked really well to see that I also had the experience of seeing the time stand still in Swedish in Starfighting while I was still working on it and it was very illuminating to see the time in the fine language because I was still coming together I actually put cuts in for the production in Starfighting while I was in Starfighting because when you see you're working in a fine language you go oh she's been quiet don't stay long too much and you know I do have a certain imbalance to you even if you don't have the words you're watching and you hate it and that was really important yeah sometimes you can also feel that the scene has gone on too long when you're not listening to the words and you just realize there's a duration problem any other questions what's our schedule Karen thank you thank you thank you thank you all for coming and most importantly thank you to the independence of the library and sponsor this event this library is a beautiful library that begins foundationing the best small library in America in 2012 we're thrilled to be here thank you