Richard Greenberg

My friends and family have been so well trained that they know I really mean it when I say that I don't care if the review is good, because that can be as dangerous as when it's bad. It's less demoralizing, but it can be just as confusing.

My usual route is, I do a play at South Coast Rep, then there's time between and I revise it, and then I take it to New York.

By the time I started writing plays, Broadway was never an expectation, so it's never been central.

I don't write a play from beginning to end. I don't write an outline. I write scenes and moments as they occur to me. And I still write on a typewriter. It's not all in ether. It's on pages. I sequence them in a way that tends to make sense. Then I write what's missing, and that's my first draft.

It's weird, because I don't feel prolific. I don't write anything for months at a time.

I was formed by 'The Forsyte Saga' marathon. There was something about seeing all those events telescoped that was unbelievably moving: that sense of time as something that can be tinkered with.

When we watch a play under the standard circumstances, we've lost volition and time is passing. A still play feels like an existential threat.