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" Because I didn't go to graduate school or have mentorship out of college, meeting other playwrights and developing those friendships as a result of being a 'grown up' playwright - that's become an essential community for me. My contemporaries are all my mentors whether they know it or not. "

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" My own journey as a writer has been the discovery of different theatrical voices. Chekhov was a revelation. Tennessee Williams was another one. We read 'The Glass Menagerie' in high school, and I still remember the cover. "

Stephen Karam

Journey

High School

Remember

" I don't know how to produce work if it's not something that's deeply scaring me or troubling me. "

" I didn't quite fit in in any particular, specific way. I was a gay teenager who was into drama. "

" I think it's scary to be alive, but also exhilarating and joyful. "

" Without a conscious effort, all of my plays have all featured gay characters. I'm proud of that. "

" I lived in a basement duplex on 96th Street on the Upper West Side. "

" Everyone will always have ideas about how to make your work better. Everyone has advice about how to end your play differently. Start it differently. And it's not about right or wrong. At the end of the day, it's your baby, and you know what's best. "

" I don't think I could write a good play if I was setting out to write about the death of the American middle class. "

" When you're the artsy, weirdo, introverted outsider growing up, you don't fit into your community. "

" The human condition is endlessly fascinating to me, and the existential horrors of life are what drive our imaginations and theater in general. "

Stephen Karam

Existential

Our

" With 'The Humans,' I've found that because it's related to very familiar forms - the family play and the thriller, almost a genre-collison play - some people want it to be one or the other. Either less dark and more of a family comedy or a full-fledged thriller with blood and ghosts jumping out of closets. Everyone's taste is different. "

" I think being gay has resulted in gay characters standing front and center in all of my work. "

" All of my plays are deeply autobiographical. But it's not straight autobiography. "

" I was not exposed to a lot of culture. The shows we saw in high school, like 'Phantom of the Opera' and 'Miss Saigon,' were thrilling. But my love affair with theater started with seeing a production of 'Little Shop of Horrors' that my sister was in. "

" Janet Carroll and Robert Pine, Chris Pine's dad, were in my first play, and they were so astonishingly good, I felt it raised my game instantly. "

" I've always viewed 'Sons of the Prophet' as the first part of a larger trilogy - not three plays dependent on each other but three stand-alone plays connected by theme and, likely, further adventures of the Douaihy family. "

" Until I have a family or a mortgage, I'm trying to keep my lifestyle simple and my apartment affordable so that I can continue to focus on theater. That's as good as it gets for me. "

" Good actors can tell you more about your play than 1,000 hours alone at your desk. "

" I think that I'm going to write a bigger thing, and then I end up writing about people, and the bigger thing recedes into the background, and hope that it's still there. "

" I think the best directors aren't afraid to ask questions. "

" I think 'Speech & Debate' surprised people because it's a play about teenagers that took the teenagers very seriously. They are very real. People wanted to see if they identified with one of the kids, that loneliness, that yearning for something bigger. That feeling of being stuck, it's very adolescent, but those kinds of feelings linger on. "

" I worry that I will lose control over the projects I get to work on. "

" I hope to be known as a writer who told the truth. "

" I definitely prefer to write under my own volition and see what happens. "