I tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money.
BETH HENLEYThat was always my inclination, to start on a new play before the other one gets done, because at least you’ll have something to go back to if that play gets trashed.
More Beth Henley Quotes
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Plays are so much more special if they’ve never ever had a production, but I think you can really work on a play and make it better with each production.
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My first few plays took place in the South and even The Lucky Spot was in the thirties but in Louisiana.
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But when I got to SMU and decided to take a playwriting class, I said this isn’t a bad idea. IfI write characters, they could be as dumb as me, and I don’t have to be very smart.
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I love writing for the screen.
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I just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.
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It’s called Sisters of the Winter Madrigal. It was interesting for me to see it done after so many years; because I wrote it and I didn’t realize what a rage I was in.
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I was just restless with being in school; so I went out to Los Angeles.
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The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel, Mississippi.
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That’s what I like about [smoking] . . . taking a drag off of death, Mmm! Gives me a sense of controlling my own destiny. What power! What exhilaration! Want a drag?
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What I loved about the acting class was that you got to think all day long about a person that wasn’t you, and figure out why they were sad and what they wanted, what they dreamed.
BETH HENLEY -
In movement class, you had to lie on the floor and get your alignment in to pass the class.
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That was always my inclination, to start on a new play before the other one gets done, because at least you’ll have something to go back to if that play gets trashed.
BETH HENLEY -
I’m very into the first production of the show.
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But here’s the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.
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Somehow I got to be one of five or six actors that the directors would use as guinea pigs at this directing colloquium, where people pay to listen to and watch the directors direct.
BETH HENLEY