Emily Mann interview with Edward Albee
From Edward Albee’s Director Emily Mann invited Mr. Albee to read this quote at first rehearsal of Me, Myself & I. YOUNG MAN: Then listen. My mother died the night that I was born, and I never knew my father; I doubt my mother did. But, I wasn’t alone, because lying with me . . . in the placenta . . . there was someone else . . . my brother . . . my twin. |
Three-time Pulitzer winner Edward Albee is widely considered to be America’s foremost living playwright. His plays include Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Zoo Story, The Play About the Baby and All Over. McCarter was thrilled to receive a grant from the Ford Foundation to commission Albee. The result of this commission is Me, Myself & I. Albee turns 80 in March, and including Me, Myself & I, there are four major productions of his work scheduled in the NY area this season. Artistic director Emily Mann, who will direct Me, Myself & I, recently sat down with him to discuss his process and his play.
EM: Now I get to ask you things I’ve never asked you before about the play! When did you start working on this play?
EA: I’ve no idea. I never know when I start working on my plays, because after I’ve been working on them for a while in the unconscious, they start impinging on my conscious mind. And I become aware of the fact that I have been thinking about a play without knowing that I’ve been thinking about it. That is my creative process….anything that I’ve totally invented, I’ve obviously been thinking about it before I become aware that I’ve been thinking about it. So, no, I have no idea when I started working on it.
EM: You one time gave me the best advice one writer could give to another….You said that for you, you sit down to write when the characters are talking to each other in your mind unbidden…
EA: And getting in my way.
EM: How so getting in your way?
EA: Because I keep having visions of them and I keep hearing them and I keep seeing scenes happening. And then I know that that reality is impinging completely and unhappily on so-called real reality. And then I have to start writing. My new play, the one that I’m thinking about now, that I know that I’m writing next, I’ve already begun to hear it and to see, see visual things, and I know that I’ll get to that if I have five minutes between now and May.
EM: Between now and May….you have scheduled yourself so solidly.
EA: I didn’t do it. One thing that it’s very important for this interview to understand, I don’t want anybody to get the idea that I thought it would be a good idea to have an Albee festival on my birthday. It wasn’t my idea at all. This thing fell in to place and just happened. I wouldn’t do anything that self serving.
EM: I’m sure of that. It is very interesting, because you, you were simply, this particular play you were commissioned …
EA: Three years ago.
EM: Three years ago, yeah, and it happened to be ready now. Do you remember who was talking to you first? Were all of the characters there?
EA: I think it was probably the brothers, I suspect.
EM: And what is it, do you know, what it is about twins?
EA: Oh, I suspect that being an orphan, I probably thought I had a brother. I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m just guessing about that.
EM: It’s also interesting that the actual identical twins who came to audition for us, each one of them felt that you must be a twin. Each one of them said that. They said, no one has ever captured what it feels like to be a twin the way you have.
EA: Really, how wonderful. Well, that’s nice to hear. Makes my head explode.
EM: So if you were asked, would you say it’s a comedy? I would, but would you?
EA: The definition of comedy is people getting what they want. Tragedy is people getting what they deserve…. Is it a comedy? I don’t know. I find those terms demeaning and misinforming to audiences. “A comedy,” “a dark comedy”—that’s an appalling phrase, a dark comedy, as if they couldn’t afford lights. I’ve always thought that the whole thing would be done in somber shadows. It’s a play!...No, it is not a comedy, it is not a tragedy, it’s a play.
EM: So, can you talk a little bit about it physically, visually, because you had, unlike many playwrights, you had in your mind a very, very sharp image.
EA: I always do.
EM: You always do. Can you talk about that?
EA: I always, when I’m writing my plays, I see them and I hear them, as performed pieces. I see them being performed on stage, I see them as plays. I don’t…this saves so much time… I don’t see them as some kind of amorphous reality. …So what I write is what will work on a stage, that won’t necessarily work for a novel. I don’t confuse the two. And since I hear it, I see it very visually.
EM: Right, right. Which is lovely. Did you see it as spare when you first drew it?
EA: Yes. Always that spare….
EM: Do you see clothing on characters when you see it?
EA: Yes. I see clothing, I don’t see costumes.
EM: What else did I want to ask you…You write it all down, you see, it’s all on the page, so it’s very hard to talk ABOUT.
EA: That’s because I put down on paper what I see and hear.
EM: I know. And you’ve got stage directions in the punctuation…it’s all there. Oh, it’s semicolon, oh it’s a period, oh it’s a comma.
EA: It’s a score.
EM: It’s a score. Exactly. It’s so much like a piece of music, and you know, once you hear it and you have what the tempo is, and you have the melody, then you have to go.
The only other thing… no, I don’t want to talk about it. I sometimes think talking too much dissipates the clarity of it. But is there anything you want to tell an audience about it?
EA: Well, I hope by the end of the play they will understand why it’s Me, Myself and I. The three rather than the two.
EM: That’s a good answer. That’s a very simple. Good.
