Plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time. You can't read it three times and say, 'OK, I got it. I know what's happening.'
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Every so often you read a play and a character just speaks to you - almost seems to speak through you, in fact.
Plays are about understanding what happens, what it means. If we just leaned into the story, for lack of a better word, it would still be a powerful story but, like delight, it might disappear an hour after you saw it.
A good play puts the audience through a certain ordeal.
When you do a play, you do it for a couple months, and it just gets in your bones. You can learn about somebody that way.
In reading plays, however, it should always be remembered that any play, however great, loses much when not seen in action.
A play, after all, is a mystery. There's no narration. And as soon as there's no narration, it's open to interpretation. It must be interpreted. You don't have a choice... Each play can become many things.
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.
You write a play mostly out of yourself. There's a need to get a certain thing down.
Often my characters don't know what the issues of the play are. They think they're doing one thing, but something else is actually orchestrating their lives.
A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.