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In order to deliver the emotional truth in the story, you have to include some of the literal truth.

A play is fiction - and fiction is fact distilled into truth.

The most pivotal moments in people's lives revolve around emotions. Emotions make stories powerful.

The stories that I like to tell and the movies I like are always grounded in the emotional arc of the characters.

Pretty much anything you care to imagine can happen in a fantasy, which in turn means you can really crank up the intensity of the tale you're telling.

I think plays have nothing to do with one's own personal life. Not in my experience, anyway. The stuff of drama has to do, not with your subject matter, anyway, but with how you treat it. Drama includes pain, loss, regret - that's what drama is about!

Truth is quite constricting, in a way. You endlessly see at the start of a film 'This is a true story'.

If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character's mind at that point, it may not turn out to be a very good play, but at least it will be a play where people are behaving in a kind of truthful way.

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'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people.