I think a strong case can be made that MFA programs have done considerable harm to theater. Essentially they take talented writers out of the real world and put them in an environment where they have to please a group of professors who tastes run to the abstract and esoteric. The disconnect between what an academic wants from a play and what an audience does is profound. And it becomes a hard habit to shake once you leave the academy, which is why I think we have too many plays today that seem written by playwrights to please other members of the theater community, the audience be damned.

For me at least it’s comes down to this–a play has to have an emotional impact. I don’t care if it comes from laughing uproariously because of the jugglers or weeping because of the death of a character, it’s got to be there. This doesn’t have to take the form of catharsis–wonder and awe are also legitimate as far as I’m concerned. I just need to feel something, that’s all.

How did theater become seen as such a cerebral art form? I began writing plays because going to the theater was for me a visceral experience. That’s the huge advantage you get from it being live–you can go for and get to the jugular.