has no idea until the very end that it’s him who’s responsible for
being able to move a play. You know, you have to have a
the horror that’s all around him. Many people who are respon-
movie star in your play in order to be able to sell tickets.
sible for murders and deaths would absolutely deny it. That’s
People don’t come to see plays, they come to see movie
the real fascination of the play.
stars. And as a writer, it kind of turns your stomach. And
I think places like Signature, which are dedicated to the
Signature: Do you think that the notion of fate speaks to
our relationship to the past?
writer, are really the most extraordinary places, not just in
SS: I think it’s a much deeper question about how we don’t
to promote the writer as being the real spinal cord of the-
accept our fate. We don’t see destiny, we don’t see that this
atre, to see really great writing and to promote really good
is fated, we don’t see that we’re living in a situation that’s
writing is what the theatre’s all about to me. Of course, I’m
terminable. We spend all our time denying it, in fact.
speaking from the point of view of a playwright. But I think
So…now whether a play can educate people into that or
it is! When you look at Beckett’s work, when you look at
not, to accepting…maybe it can. Maybe that’s what the
Shakespeare’s work, they were
Greeks were all about, I don’t know.
creating extraordinary theatre.
the United States, but in Europe. Everywhere. To continue
To find places that promote
Signature: At Signature, we’ve had the pleasure of doing your
work in a full season, and several new plays in the years since,
and I wonder if you could talk about how your relationship to
the theatre has changed.
that sort of work, it’s getting
SS: I’m very disappointed in the current state of theatre,
extraordinary feat. n
scarcer and scarcer.
So what Jim [Houghton]
has done really is an
especially in New York, about this whole business of not
(top): Sam Rockwell and Gordon Joseph Weiss in
Fool for Love at Williamstown Theatre Festival, 2014;
(bottom): Ethan Hawke and Arliss Howard in
The Late Henry Moss at Signature Theatre, 2001.