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 HENLEYI was just restless with being in school; so I went out to Los Angeles.
More Beth Henley Quotes
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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.
BETH HENLEY -
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 -
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.
BETH HENLEY -
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 -
It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.
BETH HENLEY -
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 was just restless with being in school; so I went out to Los Angeles.
BETH HENLEY -
I just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.
BETH HENLEY -
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.
BETH HENLEY -
Part of that is that New York has proved to be too much fun for me to live and work; I love New York so much.
BETH HENLEY -
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.
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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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I’m very into the first production of the show.
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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