I Got To New York When I

There's No Way To Escape The Fact That We've Grown Up In A Violent Culture, We Just Can't Get Away From It, It's Part Of Our Heritage. I Think Part Of It Is That We've Always Felt Somewhat Helpless In The Face Of This Vast Continent. Helplessness Is Answered In Many Ways, But One Of Them Is Violence.

People Talk About The 1960s In A Nostalgic Way, But To Me It Was Terrifying. People Were Getting Assassinated. There Was Vietnam. There Were Race Riots. It Felt Like Everything Was Going To Get Blown Up Sky-high. It Didn’t Feel Like Flower Power. It Felt Like Armageddon.

In Many Of My Plays, There Was A Kind Of Autobiographical Character In The Form Of A Son Or Young Man. The Purpose Of It, Of Course, Was To Write About Myself. That Character Was Always The Least Fully Realized. Eighteen Years Later, You Realize, That's What He Was About.

In Real Life We Don't Know What's Going To Happen Next. So How Can You Be That Way On A Stage? Being Alive To The Possibility Of Not Knowing Exactly How Everything Is Going To Happen Next - If You Can Find Places To Have That Happen Onstage, It Can Resonate With An Experience Of Living.

I Was In The War. I Know How To Kill. I Was Over There. I Know How To Do It. I've Done It Before. It's No Big Deal. You Just Make An Adjustment. You Convince Yourself It's All Right. That's All. It's Easy. You Just Slaughter Them.