This morning, while riding the train to the day job, i read an interview with Suzan-Lori Parks and August Wilson in American Theater magazine.
Below an excerpt that spoke to the wussy-wuss who often hangs around me:
SUZAN-LORI: WHEN DID YOU KNOW YOU WERE DOING A 10-PLAY CYCLE?
AUGUST WILSON: After I'd written Joe Turner...because I'd written three plays that were all set in different decades. Why don't I continue to do that?
SUZAN-LORI: WAS IT LIKE A RED CARPET UNROLLING? WAS THAT A SCARY MOMENT?
AUGUST WILSON: No, it kept me safe, in the sense that I was never finished. I never had to worry about what my next play was going to be and come up with an idea. I would just pick a decade and go: Okay, the '60s—and I would think about stuff from the '60s. Because I hadn't finished, I was never scared about anything, it was just: Okay, let's move on to the next one. It was all one work, and I hadn't finished, so I couldn't stop and rest on my laurels or be satisfied or wonder about where it's gone. I didn't know what was going to happen in the play, I just started with a line of dialogue or with a feeling. I work like this—in collages. I just write stuff down and pile it up, and when I get enough stuff I spread it out and look at it and figure out how to use it. You get enough stuff and you start to build the scene and you don't know where the scene's going, and you don't have any idea what's going to follow after that.
But once you get the first scene done (or it might be the fourth scene in the play), then you can sort of begin to see other possibilities. Just like working in collages, you shift it around and organize it: This doesn't go here; that speech doesn't really belong to that person, it belongs to this person. So, very much like Romare Bearden, you move your stuff around on the pages until you have a composition that satisfies you, that expresses the idea of something and then bingo you have a play.
SUZAN-LORI: I'VE NEVER HEARD ANYONE SAY THEY WORK LIKE THAT.
AUGUST: I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but I remained confident that it would all turn out.
SUZAN-LORI: WHERE DOES THAT CONFIDENCE COME FROM, MAN?
AUGUST: Well...I don't know. It comes from an interior life, and as Bearden said, "Art is born out of necessity." So the thing wills itself into being because it has to. Because this is part of your survival, the necessity, the urge to live. It's all part of all of that together. Confidence is a part of it, and you have to believe that you could dive off a cliff and that you'll be okay, that you'll sprout wings and you'll fly, otherwise you'll never dive off the cliff. So, once you do that the first time, and you do sprout wings, it becomes easier to do that the second time. There's no guarantee; it might be the end of it all. But unless you have confidence, you simply cannot do the work.
