As a playwright, you can cover a lot of waterfront without being able to hold your own against an expert in any of those areas. I have no illusions about that.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
To me, the job of a playwright is to explore and bring to light our lives. You can't hold back; you have to give in to this. Sometimes, you say things people don't want to hear.
One of the things you hope you've done as a playwright is create roles that can sustain different interpretations.
As a planning board commissioner, I have to review the applications for development throughout the city, and the bulk of those applications have been for the waterfront. I think the progress the waterfront has made is amazing.
Being a playwright is like the equivalent of doing a jigsaw puzzle that has 1,500 pieces, and it's a jigsaw of a blue sky. Not a cloud in sight.
It's very hard to be a playwright because it's very competitive.
I think what helps me when I'm working on a play, any play, is the degree to which the writer has truly visualized, and then fulfilled, the vision of the world that he or she is creating.
A prose writer never sees a reader walk out of a book; for a playwright, it's another matter. An audience is an invaluable education. In my experience, theatre artists don't know what they've made until they've made it.
There's such a work ethic involved in theatre that you can't learn in L.A.
You can't be a playwright without believing there's an audience for adventurous work.
You can't make a living as a playwright. You can barely scrape by.