It's the Intermission
A Creative Coffee Break

Life. Football. Sandwiches.

Bernadette
relaying what the man on the train said in
The Edge of our Bodies
by Adam Rapp

I believe that the way to write a good play is to convince yourself that it is easy to do—then go ahead and do it with ease.

Don’t maul, don’t suffer, don’t groan—till the first draft is finished.

Then Calvary—but not till then.

Doubt—and be lost—until the first draft is finished.

A Play is a Phoenix—it dies a thousand deaths.

Usually at night—In the morning it springs up again from its ashes and crows like a happy rooster.

It is never as bad as you think.

It is never as good as you think.

It is somewhere in between and success or failure depends on which end of your emotional gamut concerning its value it actually approaches more closely.

But it is much more likely to be good if you think it is wonderful while you are writing the first draft.

An artist must believe in himself—Possibly not so passionately as Lawrence—but passionately. Your belief is contagious. Others say—He is vain—but they are affected.

Tennessee Williams, Journal entry October 5, 1941
Notebooks

…I was just writing sound patterns and stuff like that. I imagined it as a novel in play form, if it was ever published…It was an exercise in writing, it was an exercise in dialogue, it was an exercise in sound. Only much later did it evolve into a play. And when I finished it I really liked it. It hadn’t crossed my mind that I was writing a full-length play. It would be the first full-length play I had written. I was thrilled by that.

Lanford Wilson
talking about Balm in Gilead
Interview, In their Company, Portraits of American Playwrights, p. 262, 2006

Gwen: Why are you back in muscular therapy, creep?
Ken: Good God, no reason. Apparently I was walking wrong. I was walking with my arms instead of my stomach.

from Act 1
Fifth of July
by Lanford Wilson
The first play I ever saw on Broadway.

I’m going to secure the perimeter.

Edith, to Kenny and Benji
Act 1 of
Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them
by A. Rey Pamatmat

Sometimes a character brushes up against me.

Chet, Act 1 of
A Devil at Noon
by Anne Washburn

Those pants are not pink, Devon, they’re salmon.

Simone, Act 1 of
Elemeno Pea
by Mollie Smith Metzler

What’s a little hypertension when you’re happy?

Ellen, Act 1 of
Maple and Vine
by Jordan Harrison