For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I have to move on now to something else.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Each play I write has its own unique origin story.
I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of play.
You know, essentially when you do a play you're reinterpreting a work of art that already exists. That's not what happens with a movie.
Before trying a novel I wrote a couple of plays.
I think plays, like books, are endemic. They grow out of the soil of the writer and the place he's writing about. I think, you just can't move them about, you know.
Every play I write is about love and distance. And time. And from that we can get things like history.
I'm more rooted in new plays and new writing.
Probably 90 percent of the stuff I make has inevitably been done before... Whether it's playing Hamlet, which has been on the go for 400 years, or pieces from the cinematic world that also have been essayed before, I feel released by that.
I've redone plays of mine and made changes. A play is a living thing, and I'd never say I wouldn't rewrite years later. Tennessee Williams did that all the time, and it's distressing, because I'd like the play to be out there in its finished form.
Plays are not written but rewritten, and much of the rewriting takes place at the behest of the director, whose job it is to grapple with the myriad complexities of moving a play from the page to the stage.