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" That stupid postmodern emphasis on image over content has slammed us right into a dramaturgy that willfully leaves the audience behind and then resents the fact that they don't 'get it.' "

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" Is the American theatre allowing itself to become irrelevant? The problem isn't that playwrights aren't being paid enough. It's that theatres all over America are looking towards New York to tell them what new plays to do. "

Theresa Rebeck

America

Looking

New York

" I have spent my whole life working in the theater, and most of the people I know have done the same. And we are pretty interesting people. "

" The audience just doesn't care. They are just as interested in women-centric stories as they are in stories about men. "

" Spielberg read the 'Understudy' and decided that was the voice he wanted to write 'Smash.' He wanted a story that had humanity and humor and high-stakes dreams. "

" I see how the Midwest distrusts the East Coast. The Midwest sees itself as morally superior. The Coast sees itself as intellectually superior. And the two are actually the same thing. "

" The myth that theater isn't for everybody is total nonsense. In the 18th and 19th centuries, everybody in America used to go to the theater all the time. The shows they went to see were big, crazy melodramas that had careening storylines and houses burning down and pretty girls in danger and comedy and death and destruction. "

" I remember when I was at Brandeis, Geoffrey Wolff, he was a great fiction-writing teacher. He was the writer-in-residence, and for those of us who wanted to be writers, you were so excited to be in the same hallway as him. "

" I'm an impatient person. "

Theresa Rebeck

Impatient

Person

" I think new plays are vastly more surprising and challenging and inspiring; I hear from audiences all the time that they are delighted when they see plays about the world we live in now, at this moment. "

" Because I'm an American woman, and I write straight plays, it's always been sort of assumed I would never be done on Broadway. But that was never the goal. "

" Not so long ago, my feminist education taught me to ask the question, 'Is the gaze male?' The answer, apparently, is yes, which is why so many movies and television shows are about men and not women. "

Theresa Rebeck

Women

Movies

" There are times when I wonder how I ever thought that I could dramatize the death of a national discussion as a family comedy. "

" Why on earth is the 'New Yorker' publishing puff pieces about pretty girls who go to parties? Does the 'New Yorker' ever run photos of cute boys just because they're cute and they come from money and they go to lots of parties? "

" Honestly, the thing that I have found to be most useful over a long career, or maintaining a long career, is taking back the power at some point and self-producing. "

" Why is it so hard for men to identify with women as fellow travelers on this good Earth? "

" I actually think we should be trying to be rigorous in our thinking about television and the way it enters our lives and shapes the way so many people think. "

" I am curious about a lot of things. I'm perplexed and engaged. "

" Some people think big audiences are crass and that, say, a comedy that appeals to a wide audience is pandering. Other people would argue that you could say that about Moliere. "

" I have always worked consistently, even in small ways and even in smaller theaters where I'll do One Acts or something. "

" Moliere and Arthur Miller affected me at a very young age. In adulthood, I became overwhelmed by Chekhov. Those are my big theatrical influences. "

" I actuall have to defend realism in theatre because I think TV does it badly - so corrupted by layers of bureaucrats who want to leave examination or psychology. "

" I'm not afraid of just cranking it out and seeing what comes out of my subconscious. Because I don't always know what I'm feeling. I do a lot of rewriting later. But that first blast feels like a spigot - like it's coming from somewhere else. "

" Watching people toss all caution to the wind, who are ready to put their lives on the line for a dream, is something that is accessible. "

" Everyone pays lip service to this whole idea of doing more new plays, and nobody ever does it. "

" The stage gives you more control over your own work; in television, there's a distressing amount of communal writing. Unless it's your show, you have no control over that. You're at the mercy of whoever's running the show. "

" I think it goes without saying that young would-be playwrights in developmental workshops should be so lucky as to write plays as good as 'Waiting for Godot,' 'Uncle Vanya' or 'King Lear,' none of which would have existed without a decent plot. "

" Some of my family goes back a long way in Denver. "

" I think, with most writers, their neurosis is finishing things. I have a different neurosis. I'm terribly anxious when it's not finished. Then I become really difficult to live with. "

" I have tremendous affection for New York and my life, but I'm a satirist at heart. And it's easy to satirize New York. "

" In television, what you are doing is trying to fit your voice into a particular mold. "