What’s interesting is this was the first play I wrote in response to something. I’d read The Vortex by Noël Coward and was really fascinated by it. But I also felt that Mr. Coward was constrained by the morality of his time. How’s that for presumptuous! I’d claim I was drunk but I don’t drink. I can only claim I was young.
Free Will was also produced at the Woolly Mammoth. Again, a play that started in a showcase grew up to be a hit—and this time it won the Helen Hayes Award for best new play. Fat Men had been nominated, but I lost to Athol Fugard. I remember telling a reporter that I was “glad for Mr. Fugard as his career clearly needed the jump-start an award like this could provide.”
A word on awards. I’ve been nominated for a few and won a couple. It’s a strange phenomenon. I arrive feeling quite above the fray. I, personally, NEVER think I have the remotest chance of winning, so I adopt an “artists shouldn’t compete” attitude. Within five minutes of the evenings commencement, I start to think . . . “What the hell, I could win. You never know.” By the time my category rolls around I’m in a white-knuckled frenzy of competitive zeal, ruthless to win the damn thing! “Let me at MY statue and why is everyone clapping for Terrence McNally!” (By the way, Mr. McNally, Congratulations.)
Free Will is an odd play, even for me. I experiment with style quite wildly, careening from farce to Brecht to something else without a pause. I never intend a play to be strange. I simply use whatever tools I have to tell a story. For me, playwriting is an exciting mix of the deliberate and the unconscious. I don’t know if the whole thing works. It’s not for me to say. It’s funny in parts and then jarring, using shifts of theatrical genre to disturb. I think Joe Orton once said you have to shock people sometimes to wake them up—or I may have imagined that to justify things. I will say, looking back, that I am very proud of the monologues that comprise the bulk of Act II. And Philip says some things that every man must have felt at some point. Or is it me? I know it’s not me, so don’t try to make me feel bad!
PTERODACTYLS
After a number of years at the Sanford Meisner I was tired. I was tired of working so hard. I was tired of not getting paid. I was tired of painting sets and buying props and begging for costumes. It was a grind working fifty hours a week at my day job (retail by now) then writing and rehearsing plays at night. Plus, I was frustrated that my so-called career didn’t exist. Frankly, no one cared what we did on Eleventh Avenue. I decided not to do my next play with the Vortex. I’d send it out. If no one wanted to do it, fine. I’d just hold on to it and try again. Imagine my surprise when several theatres expressed interest. You see, by now the literary managers knew who I was, even if the artistic directors didn’t.
I’ll never forget the reading at Playwrights Horizons. First of all, I am NEVER happy with readings of my plays. Ever. They are too tricky, both emotionally and stylistically, to be served by a reading. As soon as the actors think they know what it is, it changes. Well, at Playwrights I thought the reading went particularly badly. Afterwards I met with some of the artistic staff. They told me how much they liked it AND what was wrong with it and how I might fix it. I listened, growing more petulant with every passing minute, quite sure I was right and they were wrong about everything. But I was so hungry to get a production that I went home and rewrote the whole thing—OVERNIGHT! I showed up the next morning with one hundred and forty-two new pages. Dropping them on the desk, I said, “I think the play was better before, but here’s what you asked for.” . . . They never got back to me.
A few months later Doug Aibel called me. How can I ever repay the debt I owe him? Doug is the artistic director of the Vineyard Theatre and such a sweet man. He liked the play and offered to do a workshop, then a production. He didn’t need any readings. He didn’t suggest I “fix” the play. He showed real courage and committed right there. I began hunting for a director. This was a nightmarish process, a series of meetings, usually over coffee (I don’t drink coffee), where we “discussed” the play. “Discussed” is a euphemism for “the director tells me how to fix it and gives me suggestions and copious notes.” For me the most important thing in collaborating with a director is that we see the same basic play in our imaginations. Suggestions like, “I think you should cut the dinosaur,” indicated to me that this wasn’t the case. I usually went on an inner journey during these meetings. The second ingredient in a good collaboration is more personal. I need to feel I can yell at and cry in front of my director. Although I am more apt to do the latter than the former, I like to keep my options open. This criterion for choosing a good director is largely ignored in most graduate courses.
I was in Washington D.C., directing Free Will when I called David Warren. Doug Aibel had faxed me his number and his bio. But I’d misplaced the second page, so I approached the phone call having no idea who he was or what he’d done. Our conversation
