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It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

Beth Henley

In movement class, you had to lie on the floor and get your alignment in to pass the class.
BETH HENLEY

Class Lying Movement
I love to work, although sometimes I can spend whole days doing nothing more than picking the lint off the carpet and talking to my mother on the phone.
BETH HENLEY

Mother Phones Talking
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

Director People Pigs
I was just restless with being in school; so I went out to Los Angeles.
BETH HENLEY

Country Restless School
The impetus behind going to graduate school was a year after graduating from college spent in Dallas working at the dog food factory and Bank America and not having met success in my chosen field, which at that point was being an actress.
BETH HENLEY

College Dog School
I tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money.
BETH HENLEY

Money Raise Theatre
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.
BETH HENLEY

Christmas School Writing
I just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.
BETH HENLEY

Divorced Own Wretchedness
My first few plays took place in the South and even The Lucky Spot was in the thirties but in Louisiana.
BETH HENLEY

Louisiana Lucky Play
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.
BETH HENLEY

Character Smart Writing
The most glorious thing about working in the collaborative art is when you have somebody like Susan Kingsley or Kathy Bates who are better than your play.
BETH HENLEY

Art Glorious Play
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?
BETH HENLEY

Destiny Giving Smoking
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

Done Inclination Play
It’s really interesting that whenever you do something that is so out of character, like having an emotional outburst, that you don’t get in trouble.
BETH HENLEY

Character Emotional Interesting
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

Class Long Thinking
There are probably brilliant people, geniuses, alive today who don’t even know how to say, “Hello, how do you do?” because their minds are absorbed with electronic images.
BETH HENLEY

Live Mind People Today

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

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It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

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