When you’re writing, do you know what your characters wear? Very seldom do I write in chronological order. I have this puzzle-like way that I put it together. There’s a lot of posting of scenes and of pages on the wall and on the floor and rearranging things and writing things to fill in holes.
Then I keep letting them talk to one another, and then I massage the structure of the play on the back end. And then the characters and I let them talk to one another and that dictates the form. But when I say theme, I don’t start with a thesis statement. In broad brushstrokes, there would be theme. It would scare the bejesus out of me and I’d be like, “Not that page!” What is your writing process like? What’s your way into a story? It must have been this book of Walt Disney fairy tales and there was this image of the prince with the sword and the queen has turned herself into the dragon and has flames.
My brain just went to, weirdly, Sleeping Beauty. What is the first piece of storytelling that had a major impact on you? Excerpts from a 2016 interview at The Interval.
