DAVID RABE

There's no demand for a body of work, though writers will be criticized for not having produced one.

It was a roller-coaster process. For a long time I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn't writing with an outline. And, rare for me, I wrote scenes out of sequence. . . . I didn't understand the play when I wrote it. It was something I'd give in to. It happens to me periodically. I give over and write whatever comes to me and I don't know what it means and then I do. It's thrilling.

I wrestled with my Catholicism for a long time. It took a long time to escape. It began with a sense that it was repressive, stern, judgmental. It was passionate, but it was terrifying. There were individual priests and nuns who were helpful, but the religion was cold.

I get a sentence, an idea, an image, and I start. I don't know anything beyond it. I follow it.

My writing was liberated once I abandoned acting.

Sometimes it's learning how the play wants to function rather than imposing something on it. For me, that's the thrill in directing.

I never found a professional environment that made the production of plays efficient. Teamwork is demanded, but there are very few teams.

Choosing to write a play is some kind of surrender. I don't make an outline. I sit and work, and suddenly the door opens, and out it comes.

Often my characters don't know what the issues of the play are. They think they're doing one thing, but something else is actually orchestrating their lives.

. . . I do think that deep down, a lot of my work is about people trying to make reasonable accommodations of situations that are insane or absurd. . . . At first I thought the events had power in themselves, that I would just present them. I really wasn't aware of the things that finally became central issues to me - the shifting alliances, the way people hardly even know they've shifted. That part of [A QUESTION OF MERCY] is very familiar to me in terms of my other plays.

I wrestled with my Catholicism for a long time. It took a long time to escape. It began with a sense that it was repressive, stern, judgmental. It was passionate, but it was terrifying. There were individual priests and nuns who were helpful, but the religion was cold.

My writing was liberated once I abandoned acting.

I never found a professional environment that made the production of plays efficient. Teamwork is demanded, but there are very few teams.

Sometimes it's learning how the play wants to function rather than imposing something on it. For me, that's the thrill in directing.

Often my characters don't know what the issues of the play are. They think they're doing one thing, but something else is actually orchestrating their lives.

Choosing to write a play is some kind of surrender. I don't make an outline. I sit and work, and suddenly the door opens, and out it comes.

There's no demand for a body of work, though writers will be criticized for not having produced one.

. . . I do think that deep down, a lot of my work is about people trying to make reasonable accommodations of situations that are insane or absurd. . . . At first I thought the events had power in themselves, that I would just present them. I really wasn't aware of the things that finally became central issues to me - the shifting alliances, the way people hardly even know they've shifted. That part of [A QUESTION OF MERCY] is very familiar to me in terms of my other plays.

It was a roller-coaster process. For a long time I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn't writing with an outline. And, rare for me, I wrote scenes out of sequence. . . . I didn't understand the play when I wrote it. It was something I'd give in to. It happens to me periodically. I give over and write whatever comes to me and I don't know what it means and then I do. It's thrilling.

I get a sentence, an idea, an image, and I start. I don't know anything beyond it. I follow it.