Mann Interviews Albee, Part I
Posted by Adam Immerwahr on October 16th, 2007 |
A few weeks ago, McCarter Artistic Director Emily Mann sat down with playwright Edward Albee to discuss the upcoming world premiere of Albee’s Me, Myself & I, which Mann will be directing. The interview was recorded and transcribed, and a very shortened version will appear in upcoming programs and audience resource guides. The interview was so enlightening, however, that we decided to post the full transcript on the blog. Because of its length, we will be posting this in four installments. Read on for Part I of Mann Interviews Albee.
Emily Mann: I get to ask you things I’ve never asked you before about the play.
Edward Albee: Okay.
Mann: Okay?
Albee: Are you sure you want to know them?
Mann: I’m not sure I want to know them, but I’m curious anyway, to ask them, and you can actually say you don’t want to answer. I think I know the answer to this one, though. This is just really basic: When did you start working on this play?
Albee: I have no idea.
Mann: You have no idea?
Albee: I never know when I start working on any of 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. This didn’t happen in the following plays: it didn’t happen in The Death of Bessie Smith, which was about a real person; it didn’t happen in the adaptations, or it did but to a lesser extent; and it happened to a lesser extent perhaps in Three Tall Women, since that was about a real person. But anything that I’ve totally invented, I obviously have been thinking about it before I become aware that I’ve been thinking about it. Which is why when people ask me…what question do they ask me?
Mann: How long have you worked on this play?
Albee: No, not that question, there’s another one… I’ll get to it. Anyhow. So, no, I have no idea when I started working on it. No idea whatever.
Mann: You one time gave me the best advice one writer could give to another when you said you have to know when to sit down to write. And for you it’s when, you said to me, one day, it’s when the characters are speaking to you. You said that for you, you sit down to write when the characters are talking to each other in your mind unbidden…
Albee: And getting in my way.
Mann: And getting in your way.
Albee: Yes.
Mann: How so, getting in your way?
Albee: 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.
Mann: You have to start writing.
Albee: Yes.
Mann: Okay.
Albee: I mean, 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.
Mann: Fantastic.
Albee: So I know that I’ll get to that if I have five minutes between now and May.
Mann: (laughing) Between now and May… You have scheduled yourself so solidly.
Albee: I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it. Now, 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 just fell into place and just happened. I wouldn’t do anything that self serving.
Mann: I’m sure of that.
Albee: And I’m going to have to keep saying that over and over again.
Mann: (leaning close to the tape recorder) We’ll make sure it’s down loud and clear.
Albee: Because a lot of people are going to think it’s something I had my hand in.
Mann: Yeah. It is very interesting, because you, you were simply, this particular play you were commissioned…
Albee: Three years ago.
Mann: Three years ago, yeah, and it happened to be ready now.
Albee: I wrote the first half two and half years ago, and then Jonathan got sick with the cancer and I couldn’t work for two years, and then I couldn’t work for six months after he died, and then I came back and just picked it up again.
Mann: Yeah. Do you remember who was talking to you first? Were all of them there? All of the characters?
Albee: I think it was probably the brothers, I suspect, sure.
Mann: And what is it, do you know, what it is about twins?
Albee: I’ve worked with twins before, I’ve worked with identical twins before: The American Dream.
Mann: Of course! Right…of course.
Albee: So it’s not my first time…
Mann: Not new territory…
Albee: It’s not new territory for me, no.
Mann: What is it about twins, do you know?
Albee: 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.
Mann: I’m guessing about that too.
Albee: I don’t know.
Mann: 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.
Albee: Oh did they? That’s interesting.
Mann: They said no one has ever captured what it feels like to be a twin the way you have.
Albee: Oh really? How wonderful. Well that’s nice to hear.
Mann: I know, I know.
Albee: Makes my head explode. We’ll that’s nice.
Mann: Yeah.
End of Part I.
Part II of the Mann/Albee interview is available here.
Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre.
