Edward Albee: Uncomfortable Quarters

(Inge Morath)

Interview with Edward Albee

Conducted by James Grissom

New York, New York 

In the home of Marian Seldes

2002

Demands begin with the playwright--with any writer. You must demand that you tell the truth about something important to you. You must demand that it may take you to uncomfortable quarters, but you will remain there to see whatever it is you have all the way home, to cop a title.

Now if an audience has no interest in taking this journey with you--asking these questions you've raised--you fail. You are a commercial failure, as I have been and will continue to be, because I cannot become the playwright who writes with an assured hand and can always guarantee an audience. This will never change.

What has changed is that audiences no longer want to be challenged, to go to dark quarters. They may enjoy a thrilling moment or two in a dark quarter, but you can only please them if you get them back into the light and the comfort of their prejudices by ten-thirty, ten-forty-five, at the latest.

I don't think the world works that way. People don't work that way. I am writing about people in this world and how they behave, and it may be that people don't want to see it.  I will have to live with that, and I can live with that. But playwrights coming up behind me: What do they face? What truths can they reveal? What questions can they ask? 

It is entirely possible that the play, as we once knew it, will entirely disappear. Comfort and affirmation will flow freely.

©  2020  James Grissom