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The next time I write a play - in order to get audience trust for a particular sort of tragic line, I'll try to bring the audience a good distance before that. Part of that is allowing comic moments to occur. I had been afraid of that - that once the audience started laughing in the play, they would never stop.

I became frustrated early on as a playwright by a kind of smug smallness in modern drama. There was a lack of what I now understand as courage in the work of others as well as in my own work, and I found I was mildly amused or interested by such plays but not deeply engaged or enlightened.

One of the best things that happened for me as a playwright is becoming a comic-book writer.

My tutors at drama school commended and criticised my use of comedy in my acting for a long time at drama school. They said I had a tendency to somehow perform the most tragic of scenes in a slightly flippant way.

Tragedy is a great storytelling form. It worked extremely well for Shakespeare. It worked extremely well for Jim Cameron with 'Titanic.'

I'm a playwright who gets involved in movies when I'm not writing a play.

I had a great drama teacher in high school, and that's when I started to learn about the history of theater.

Yes, I am a failed playwright. I had three shows on Broadway by the time I was 30. They all flopped, and I fled.

I realized I do tragedy better than comedy.