There are times I am afraid my impulses are unconsciously conservative. Instead of believing that the world can change, I write about the sorrow of tolerating life in a world that doesn’t want to, or about how to keep hope in a world that resists movement.

Are there two kinds of playwrights – those who show and those who tell? Euripides shows us the madness of ignoring our passions in The Bacchae, Sophocles tells us how to behave in the face of tyranny in Antigone. Strindberg, Wilde, Williams show us a world awry; Ibsen, Shaw and Miller tell us who is wrong and who is right. Of course this is a wild exaggeration and not true but still.

I know at my best I resist the urge to use the big voice in my plays – in it I hear the hint of fascism. “Do as I say.” Thornton Wilder said that one of the greatest things about Shakespeare’s work is that you can’t hear the axe grinding – is Hamlet good or bad, are Romeo and Juliet foolish or wise?

How amazing that Shakespeare lets us puzzle it out for ourselves.

“After you have a psalter you will want and hanker after a breviary, after you have a breviary you will sit in an armchair like a great prelate, saying to your brother “Bring me my breviary.” St. Francis of Assisi.

I love the recognition that simplicity is hard to sustain, that we will want ever more. Isn’t that true with writing. How can I resist the urge to embellish?