I just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.
BETH HENLEYI just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.
BETH HENLEYMy first few plays took place in the South and even The Lucky Spot was in the thirties but in Louisiana.
BETH HENLEYThe 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 HENLEYI 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 HENLEYIt’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 HENLEYThat’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 HENLEYIt’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 HENLEYWhat 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 HENLEYAnd all writing is creating or spinning dreams for other people so they won’t have to bother doing it themselves.
BETH HENLEYI grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, really in suburbia, so my mother was in community theatre plays.
BETH HENLEYI did write a couple of original screenplays, but I’d rather write plays.
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.
BETH HENLEYI love writing for the screen.
BETH HENLEYSomehow 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’m very into the first production of the show.
BETH HENLEYThe 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