What I Mean By An Educated Taste

The Condition Of The Theater Is Always An Accurate Measure Of The Cultural Health Of A Nation. A Play Always Exists In The Present Tense (if It Is A Valuable One), And Its Music -- Its Special Noise -- Is Always Contemporary. The Most Valuable Function Of The Theater As An Art Form Is To Tell Us Who We Are, And The Health Of The Theater Is Determined By How Much Of That We Want To Know.

The Function Of Art Is To Bring People Into Greater Touch With Reality, And Yet Our Movie Houses And Family Rooms Are Jammed With People After As Much Reality-removal As They Can Get.

I Am Pleased And Reassured By The Fact That A Lot Of Younger Playwrights Seem To Pay Me Some Attention And Gain Some Nourishment From What I Do.

In The Thirties A Whole School Of Criticism Bogged Down Intellectually In Those Agitprop, Social-realistic Days. A Play Had To Be Progressive. A Number Of Plays By Playwrights Who Were Thought Very Highly Of Then - They Were Very Bad Playwrights - Were Highly Praised Because Their Themes Were Intellectually And Politically Proper. This Intellectual Morass Is Very Dangerous, It Seems To Me. A Form Of Censorship.

I Don't Think I've Ever Written About Me. I'm Not A Character In Any Of My Plays, Except That Boy, That Silent Boy That Turns Up In Three Tall Women.