I was an only child. I lost both my parents. By the time I was twenty I was bald. I'm homosexual. In the way of circumstances and ...background to transcend I had everything an artist could possibly want. It was practically a blueprint. I was programmed to be a novelist or a playwright. But I'm not.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The art of the theater--notoriously an "impure" art--seems to be as close to the art of politics as it is to poetry, painting or m...usic. The theater artist, whether actor or playwright, depends on the interest and support of an audience, just as the politician depends upon his constituency. The politician cannot practice his art at all without a grant from his constituency; and so he must first of all woo it. And the theater artist cannot practice his art without real people assembled before a real stage; a theater without an audience is a contradiction in terms. That is why both politics and the theater are necessarily so close to the public mood and the public mind of their times.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A playwright ... is ... the litmus paper of the arts. He's got to be, because if he isn't working on the same wave length as the a...udience, no one would know what in hell he was talking about. He is a kind of psychic journalist, even when he's great.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Each religion is a brave guess at the authorship of Hamlet. Yet, as far as the play goes does it make any difference whether Shake...speare or Bacon wrote it? Would it make any difference to the actors if their parts happened out of nothingness, if they found themselves acting on the stage because of some gross and unpardonable accident? Would it make any difference if the playwright gave them the lines or whether they composed them themselves, so long as the lines were properly spoken? Would it make any difference to the characters if A Midsummer Night's Dream was really a dream?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Othello or Nora are definite, substantial figures created by the playwright. They can be played well or badly, and they can be "in...terpreted" in one way or another; but they most definitely exist, no matter who plays them or even whether they are played at all. The character in a film, however, lives and dies with the actor. It is not the entity "Othello" interpreted by Robeson or the entity "Nora" interpreted by Duse, it is the entity "Great Garbo" incarnate in a figure called Anna Christie or the entity "Robert Montgomery" incarnate in a murderer who, for all we know or care to know, may forever remain anonymous but will never cease to haunt our memories.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye tryin...g to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What I wanted to get at is the value difference between pornographic playing-cards when you're a kid, and pornographic playing-car...ds when you're older. It's that when you're a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you're older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »