Expressing "the misery and confusion truthfully": an interview with Beth Henley.

Bryer, Jackson R.

Beth Henley's first professionally produced play, Crimes of the Heart, won the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award in 1981 after a successful New York production (prior to New York, it had been done in Louisville, Baltimore, and St. Louis in 1979 and 1980). Her first produced play, Am I Blue (1974), was written while she was an undergraduate student at Southern Methodist University. Her works for the stage since Crimes of the Heart include The Miss Firecracker Contest (1980), The Wake of Jamey Foster (1981), The Debutante Ball (1985), The Lucky Spot (1987), Abundance (1989), Signature (1990), Control Freaks (1992), Revelers (1994), L-Play (1995), Impossible Marriage (1998), Sisters of the Winter Madrigal (2001), and Exposed (2002). This interview was conducted on September 30, 2002, in the Ina & Jack Kay Theatre of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland; the audience was composed of undergraduate and graduate students and faculty members. For significant assistance in preparing the transcription of the interview, I wish to thank Carolyn Bain.

JACKSON BRYER: Can you start by telling us about your first exposure to the theatre? As I recall, you became interested in theatre through your mother, who was an actress. Talk a little bit about your early interest in theatre and also about your time as a student of theatre.

BETH HENLEY: I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, really in suburbia, so my mother was in community theatre plays. They were so magical for me, and one of the most exciting experiences was to go in and see little houses that were built for people to act in and then were torn down. I would also help her with her lines. I remember when she got to play Blanche DuBois and I got to hear those words over and over again when she was trying to learn her lines. Also, I liked to help her edit things. If she was doing a reading for a club or something, we'd have to make Blanche's speeches longer and cut out Stanley's--so I got into editing. Then, when I was a senior in high school, I was kind of bereft and she put me in an acting class. 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. I just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness. Then I went off to Southern Methodist University in Dallas. They had a really wonderful theatre department. I regret that I was so not grateful at the time to my professors. We're sort of innocently arrogant about just being young. The class I liked the best, that I think helped me the most, was my movement class because when I got out of high school, I was very hunched over. In movement class, you had to lie on the floor and get your alignment in to pass the class. You had to stand on your head for, I think, three minutes. That transformed me in a way that's hard to speak about. I also took Stage Combat, and I took a wonderful class in Theatre Styles where you'd do the Greeks and make your own mask. I remember sitting there with a death mask over me with straws coming out of my nose. I had a really good Theatre History class that, at the time, was excruciating. It was at nine in the morning, and I would sometimes go in jeans and my bedroom slippers. But actually that's kind of the way I learned about history. The only foothold I have in world history is through theatre history.

JB: All this time, you were doing this in order to become an actress?

HENLEY: Yes. I was sort of in the acting program. How I got in the acting program is a miracle. Oh, I know how I got in. Anyone could get in! You had to do a general audition for the school when you got in, and I chose to do, brilliantly I think, Willie from This Property is Condemned. And then I did Macbeth in Macbeth, which was the only Shakespeare I knew. Somehow, I was in the acting department.

JB: But it sounds like when you talk about your experience with your mother that, even if you weren't conscious of it, you were paying pretty close attention to the words.

HENLEY: Yes.

JB: Had you been interested in writing at all or were you always interested initially in being a performer--probably because your mother was a performer? Were you conscious of any interest in writing?

HENLEY: I wrote a play in sixth grade called Swing High, Swing Low. It was about Dolly, a girl who lives in the suburbs and goes to New York to be an artist. Actually, the character was named Dolly because when she came to New York, they said, "Hello, Dolly, hello!" And the parents back in the suburb were, "Kids. What's the matter with kids today?" I tried to direct as well as write this. I wasn't performing, and we got boys involved. It ended in a debacle. It never ever got on anywhere. It was a summer project. 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. I hadn't finished it and the teacher said, "Just read it anyway." I got up to read it, and I was so pained by its inadequacies that I crumpled up the paper and threw it on the floor and ran down the hallway and hid in the restroom for the rest of the afternoon. 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. I guess they were horrified by the hysterics of a junior high schooler. After that I thought, "You know what? You're not smart enough to write." But when I got to SMU and decided to take a playwriting class, I said this isn't a bad idea. If I write characters, they could be as dumb as me, and I don't have to be very smart. It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright. I wrote a play called Am I Blue, which is about a young guy who's very straight and his fraternity's sending him to a whorehouse on his eighteenth birthday and he's a virgin. He meets this young sixteen-year-old girl who's all alone on the night of her prom and lives a very chaotic life. That was my first play that was actually done.

JB: After SMU you went to graduate school at the University of Illinois. What was the impetus behind that?

HENLEY: 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. I think I had a job in a children's theatre. I taught badly because I was into nihilism at the time and that's just not where you go with teaching. Then an old professor of mine went to run the art school at the University of Illinois in Champaign. He said he would give me a scholarship to go there if I would teach. I got there and somehow miraculously lived on two hundred dollars a month, which was what I got--and I was happy to have it. I did realize after being there for a year--I didn't complete my MFA--that if they had teachers as bad as me it wasn't a good sign. So I had to more on. I was just restless with being in school; so I went out to Los Angeles.

JB: You've spoken in other interviews about a time when several successful directors came to SMU. Can you speak a little bit about what it means to a person who is an undergraduate in theatre to have an actual, successful theatre professional present? What kind of impression did it make on you?

HENLEY: A searing impression. Somehow I got to be one of five of 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. It was painful because I was a really bad actress. I remember I had just done an awful rendition of Juliet, and William Gaskill, this British director; said, "Now won't you just sit on that box and don't move!" Joseph Chaikin came and he read some stuff and he was so brilliant; that was glorious! I've never ever seen anything like that in my life. The spirit, the sort of human, animal, god energy of that guy was just unforgettable. Joseph Anthony came and we saw his film Tomorrow, which Horton Foote wrote. They were so artistic.

JB: Another story that you've told--and I don't know when this happened chronologically--is when you went to New York to see a production of The Cherry Orchard. When was that?

HENLEY: I was in college. We were having auditions the following year, so this was after my sophomore year. In the fall, I was going to have to audition for Chekhov's Three Sisters. I was reading it and it made no sense. I didn't get it. I probably had a bad translation anyway. I was like "How can I get into this character? Who are these people? They're stiff; they're not people you can really like." Then I went to see an all African-American production of The Cherry Orchard with Gloria Foster and James Earl Jones as Lopahin. I finally got it when he says, "They used to tell me I wrote like a pig." When he buys the cherry orchard, it's the happiest and most devastating moment of his life. It's so big how he did it, and I started having this sort of epileptic fit in the audience. I was crying and screaming; I was really euphoric because I understood how things could be simultaneously tragic and comic and so alive and so real. After that I understood Chekhov, but didn't get cast in Three Sisters. I did go on to write Crimes of the Heart, which is loosely based on Three Sisters.

JB: Don't you think also that the quality in Chekhov of simultaneous comedy and seriousness is something that characterizes many of your plays?

HENLEY: I like that edge. I like when I see it in writing if it's over the edge. Even something like the Marx Brothers is sort of brutal in how funny it is. Some really good things kind of swing both ways and I like to see people that can swing really, really, really sad and horrible and terrible and really, really, really beautiful and funny. I think Chekhov does that like nobody else. Shakespeare's up there, but ...

JB: Isn't there something inherently Southern about that too, about combining the most grotesque and serious kinds of things with the funny, about being able to see the humor in the grotesque? Why is that? What is there about the South that makes that particularly true?

HENLEY: That's a good question. I think that people have to be able to see two sides of the coin to survive because it is a racist society and yet you're being raised by racists. So what are you going to do? There are these people who are feeding you, but they're chauvinist and racist. You kind of have to get a little perspective. You can't go with "They're just evil," and you can't go "Oh, I believe them, I love them." You kind of have to go "This is a little more complicated."

JB: You have to see them with two different sets of eyes.

HENLEY: At least two!

JB: Was Crimes of the Heart the second play you wrote after Am I Blue? Were there other plays in between?

HENLEY: I wrote one play that was only recently done. It was buried in a trunk. 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. I always think, "Oh, I'm not a feminist. I like men." But in this play there are these two sisters: one's a whore and one's a cow herder. One wants to marry the shoemaker's son, but the king wants her because of her hair and she ends up with her ear bit off; and the other one ends up with her arm chopped off. It's very Bergmanesque; there are all kind of pieces of them in the end.

JB: Who did it?

HENLEY: A friend of mine did it, Frederick Bailey. He and I had had a double bill back when my play was at SMU. We did his Vietnam play The Bridgehead and my blue play about two virgins. His play was first and ended with somebody getting shot in the head. Then they had to clean up the blood for my play. It wasn't a perfect double bill! But he is one of my favorite writers, and he's written a play and he wanted to do these two plays on the same bill; his new play is called Dirty, Ugly People and Their Stupid Meaningless Lives. I said sign me up! So he directed both of these pieces and so that's how it got done.

JB: What was is like seeing an early play like that? Do you say to yourself, "How could I have done that?"--or were you rather pleased with it?

HENLEY: I was touched that I was that enraged. I was happy to know I had that rage and happy that I'd written it then. That's what I was saying earlier. I'm always happy to have written anything because it's kind of a mark of who you were at the time if it's even vaguely honest--though you could never redo it. I couldn't recapture that sort of frivolous rage. It had its moments, so I was really pleased.

JB: Talk a little bit about how you came to write Crimes of the Heart.

HENLEY: My friend Frederick Bailey was doing Gringo Planet, a play of his, at the La MaMa Hollywood and he produced the whole thing for $500. I thought, "Maybe I could do that." I'd written the screenplay while I was out there and I said, "This would be perfect for Sissy Spacek. I love her! I'll call up her agent and see about her reading it." So the agent says, "We don't take unsolicited material. When you get a producer to produce it, we'll be happy to look at it." Then I called up producers and they said they didn't take unsolicited material. It was a catch-22 thing. I didn't really know how to get it to a producer of how to get it to an agent. Nobody's going to look at it unless it's a success. I wrote Crimes of the Heart kind of because I thought, "At least I can do this with my friends for my friends for $500 at the La MaMa." That's why in the very first draft I don't have them cut into the cake because I'm thinking of the budget! We can't have a different cake every night, so the lights go down as they cut it. That's also why it was one set, a kitchen, and modern clothes. I was really thinking practically when I wrote that play; I was thinking about producing it on my own.

JB: Was it done at La MaMa in Los Angeles?

HENLEY: No, it wasn't done at La MaMa. I didn't have $500! Actually, Bailey, who is so instrumental in my life, had won the Actors Theatre of Louisville playwriting contest with his play The Bridgehead the year before, and he sent my play in and it won the Actors Theatre of Louisville contest.

JB: And that was the first production?

HENLEY: That was the first production, and they were very adamant about it not having been produced anywhere. That's one sort of annoying thing to me about this. 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. Anyway, that was the first place it was done.

JB: What was that like?

HENLEY: It was terrifying, number one. I remember not knowing what a cue light was because I'd never worked in a production that was high class enough to have a cue light. They kept saying, "Yeah, we'll do it with a cue light." And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, the cue light. What's the cue light?" But I had two glorious actresses in the part of Lenny and Meg. Kathy Bates played the original Lenny and this wonderful actress, Susan Kingsley, played Meg and she was a genius at it. I don't know if I want to get into the ugliness of this, but the director's wife played Babe, and she wasn't as good as the others.

JB: What is it like when you go and you're involved in a production about which you have very definite ideas, and it isn't going entirely the way you want it to go?

HENLEY: It so depends on the production. 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. And you're just "Ahh." That is just extraordinary. You have a director that sees things in the play that you didn't envision and knows how to heighten them and move the rhythm of it and to cover up any faults and make all of the assets really glimmer. I'm very into the first production of the show. I love to see the rehearsals, to sit there throughout the entire rehearsal and hear it over and over because with repetition you can get a sense of what the rhythm of the lines is. When I first started, it was much harder because in the very first production of the play, I'm thinking, "I really don't know what is the director's fault, what's my fault, what's the actor's fault." It was very hard; they'd say, "Cut this" and I would say, "But I'm not certain that needs to be cut." Now I've gotten a lot clearer on how to sort that out, I think.

JB: And how do you sort all that out?

HENLEY: I have a lot of meetings in my living room and hear it again.

JB: In other words, today you'll go to rehearsal having a lot more ideas of how things should be, and how they should sound? With Crimes of the Heart, when you got to Louisville was that really the first time you had heard the play read?

HENLEY: I think I did have a reading at my house.

JB: But you hadn't worked on it?

HENLEY: I hadn't thought of the process, of somebody telling me to cut a line. I love to cut. My fault now is making my plays too short.

JB: Has that been a result of writing a lot of plays?

HENLEY: It's the result of writing plays and feeling the audience get restless. That to me is like "I want it to move. I want it to move!" Pace, you know. I don't want you looking restless. Because it's so excruciating when you're in the theatre and you can feel that "Why isn't this over?"

JB: Crimes of the Heart was such a success. It must have been difficult to write the next play. You had a lot to live up to at that point, didn't you?

HENLEY: When I went to Louisville, I had started on a new play, The Miss Firecracker Contest. 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. It took a long time for Crimes of the Heart to get on. It was done in Louisville and in Baltimore, and then in St. Louis. It was round and about before it was actually a big success, so I had time to work on other plays.

JB: Is Crimes of the Heart the play through which you got involved with Holly Hunter?

HENLEY: No. Holly auditioned for The Wake of Jamey Foster. There was a part of a seventeen-year-old orphan who's a burn victim, who's a romantic interest of one of the boys. It was so bizarre because Holly and I got stuck in an elevator; we were trapped in this elevator together at this very first meeting. So I thought, "Hmmm." I knew who she was because someone had said that this wonderful, wonderful actress was coming in, but I was too shy to talk very much. We got free. I loved her audition so much for The Wake that when we were replacing Mary Beth Hurt in the part of Meg on Broadway in Crimes of the Heart, I got her to do that, to be that replacement, but with the stipulation that when The Wake started she'd get out of Crimes of the Heart. So Crimes was the first play of mine she was in; then she was in The Wake.

JB: Some actors and actresses have a particular affinity to certain playwrights, and it seems to me that there's something about the way Holly Hunter presents herself on stage that makes her particularly good at the roles you write.

HENLEY: Absolutely. I'm really blessed.

JB: Have you ever written anything with her in mind?

HENLEY: Yes, I have. A play called Control Freaks. We were working at a theatre in Los Angeles together, the Met Theatre, and I wrote a play for her and three other actors and she ended up doing it in LA. She was wonderful. So that play I specifically wrote for her.

JB: Do you tend to do that often--write for specific actors or actresses?

HENLEY: Not really, no. Not generally.

JB: How would you describe your relationship with Holly Hunter? When she comes to the play, does she discuss the character with you a lot? Of is it more a matter of watching her and saying things to her through the director?

HENLEY: It kind of varies because we've worked together over so many years. She particularly likes to explore while she's working and not get a lot of feedback until she's reached the limits of her exploration. It's very fearless and sometimes very, bad. That's another point about running a play with actors.

They'll risk being just terrible. Holly will come in with ideas that are just brilliant and she'll come in with this idea that makes no sense; she likes to really go with her instincts. Once she has those instincts in play, then you can shape more.

JB: Along with Holly Hunter, you've worked with some other tremendous actors over the course of your career, and you write so richly for actors. What do these great actors have in common in terms of making strong choices for your work?

HENLEY: That's a good question. I don't know. It's a deep, deep commitment and passion for investigating every facet of every moment. With Holly, it's the things that she'll do for the play, like learn to play the harp, learn to tap dance, learn to twirl a gun around, learn to play the piano.

JB: Have you ever dealt with actors, where in the end you know they're going to come up with something really, really good, but to get there you're going to have to let them do that kind of fearless exploration?

HENLEY: When we were doing Control Freaks, it was all about being out of control in rehearsals and then doing a play that is so utterly controlled. Every moment is basically choreographed, and then it explodes into this big mess--but it's a very thoughtful mess.

JB: I've heard playwrights and directors say that one of the talents of being a director and not simply a playwright at rehearsals is knowing that different actors work in different ways.

HENLEY: Yes, you have actors that are all over the board in how they've been trained and what they like and what they are used to or how they perform best.

JB: Do you speak to actors directly, or go through the director most of the time?

HENLEY: I'll speak to them directly if the director trusts me or if the director says, "What do you think of that?" Sometimes the director is so burned out talking to the actors, they'll say, "Now, Beth, what did you tell me?"

JB: Would you know in that situation if you had been given permission to talk to the actors or not?

HENLEY: Yes. I feel very much it's all sort of diplomatic and a sense of trust and deep respect. You can't just go in there and open your mouth until the cast and director feel comfortable with you.

JB: It took you a while to get away from the South, dramatically. But you have with the most recent plays not written as much about the South. What was the source of that change?

HENLEY: I guess, not living in the South. My first few plays took place in the South and even The Lucky Spot was in the thirties but in Louisiana. Then I moved further into the past into the Wyoming Territory for Abundance and then I just decided to thrust myself into the future and wrote Signature, which takes place in Los Angeles in 2052. Then I wrote Control Freaks, which is very much a Los Angeles play.

JB: You have said that one of the reasons you live in Los Angeles is because no one will bother you; everybody there is involved in film and so you can do your own thing and not feel you're competing with all the people in New York, where there are playwrights on every street corner.

HENLEY: Part of that is that New York has proved to be too much from for me to live and work; I love New York so much. It's my favorite city but it's kind of nice to go back to Los Angeles and just not be inundated with what is the scene and what is hot or what is not. You're just left on your own in Los Angeles, and you can have a nicer place with a yard there

JB: You have also said that it's a little frustrating in LA because everything is film

HENLEY: It's not a theatre town. It's film and television and that's--entertainment-wise--the heart of the city. Often people will be in plays to get into film and television; whereas, in Chicago or Seattle or New York, they're just in the plays because that's what their passion is.

JB: Do you feel that the people in LA support theatre? Are there audiences or do you find them so involved with film that theatre is a kind of secondary medium to them?

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

JB: Are the theatres in LA supported pretty well? Do they get audiences?

HENLEY: The big places like the Taper do, but some of the smaller theatres, no.

JB: Is it frustrating? When you get your plays done, you don't usually get them done in LA, do you?

HENLEY: Not usually, although occasionally.

JB: Isn't it more likely to have a reading of a new play of yours in Washington of New York than in LA?

HENLEY: Absolutely.

JB: Are playwrights treated badly in Hollywood when they write for films of are they being treated with more respect by producers and directors than they have been in the past?

HENLEY: Here's the thing you have to know about being a screenwriter. I love writing for the screen. I love that they pay you a lot of money. You get to meet fancy people and eat really good food. 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. If you write a fabulous screenplay, they pay you this chunk of money; it's theirs, they own it. I've always emotionally tried to detach myself from my screenwriting and just love doing it, enjoy doing it, and I try to do adaptations. I did write a couple of original screenplays, but I'd rather write plays. If you area screenwriter, they can fire you at any moment, and the actors can change your dialogue. It's really a director's medium, where theatre is much more a writer's medium; in theatre, you have actor approval, you have director approval, you have not necessarily design approval, but at a point you do. They can't change anything, even stage directions, without your approval. Of course they have, I suspect; but at least not when you're on the premises!

JB: What was it like adapting Crimes of the Heart as a screenplay? Didn't you have to detach yourself a little from that, almost have to not be the playwright who wrote the original play?

HENLEY: That's a long story. I was working on Crime of the Heart with Jonathan Demme, and they made us fly in from New York, to have a meeting where the producer told me I was the worst person to write this because I had written the play. So I tried to open it up, and I wrote a version of it and they said it was too much like the play. Jonathan Demme quit on principle because he didn't want to be the person to ruin this beautiful play. Then a couple of years later, I was in London and Bruce Beresford was hired to do Crimes of the Heart and I said, "They don't want me." He said, "Well, I want you and I told them I wanted you." And I read Demme's script and it veered too far from the play. I said, "Bruce, I got fired from it!" He said, "Oh, they don't know what they want." So I got rehired with Bruce Beresford who has brought a lot of plays to film. And he was lovely to work with and it was great; but it was on the verge of being catastrophic.

JB: It sounds like he had great respect for you as the writer of the play?

HENLEY: He's just a fun, smart guy who respects people; he wasn't afraid of any idea you had because he knows he's really smart. He's really experienced in what he's doing and he knows what he wants.

JB: And how much of that screenplay actually survived to be the screenplay of Crimes? Was the screenplay that survived pretty much the screenplay you wrote?

HENLEY: Very much, because he was very good as well. He wanted it short. He said, "Let's keep it short."

JB: But that's not always the case, is it?

HENLEY: No.

JB: Don't you have the kind of horror stories about Hollywood that other playwrights tell?

HENLEY: My horror stories are the screenplays that didn't get made; you get frustrated with that, but you still get paid this enormous amount for them. I figure that helps me with my theatre work.

JB: Talk a little bit about your play, L-Play.

HENLEY: I couldn't think what to write for a play. I was really fragmented in my life and so I kept scribbling. It's really painful when you're trying to come up with an idea for a play. I decided I would write a play called L-Play, which would have twelve different scenes, twelve totally different characters, and twelve different theatrical styles because I was into exploring different styles. The only unifying factor is that the names of the scenes start with an "L." This was completely stupid! But I proceeded in the face of this stupidness and it was really fun because it was a bit like an exercise for me. It was struggling with the fragmented nature of reality, like who is real, Donald Duck or Bergman, of just the different realities that come together in the fragmented world. The Learner and the Lunatic are the only reoccurring characters.

JB: You have said that frequently you write plays about characters who express some part of yourself you wouldn't express any other way. Often, it's part of yourself you're afraid of or that you wouldn't go out in public with on your own.

HENLEY: The girl, Ashby, in Am I Blue didn't get invited to the prom and she is all alone and feels isolated. I did have friends at that age, but what you fear is not having friends. You fear that part of you is not acceptable to be exposed and I think that's a lot of what I look for in my, characters. I wonder what their greatest fear is and what their greatest dream is and what the teaching is between the two. Usually their fear is holding them back from their dream, and their dream is giving them hope to fight against their fear. A lot of what I like to write about are things I'm confused about. When I was younger I kept thinking that I needed to write an important play, that I needed to help people understand something and improve the world and enlighten people--except I didn't know anything. This was the big problem. And then I read where Ionesco said: "Oh, I just like to write about my own confusion." I said, "Well, I can do that; I'm certainly confused." It was like this weight was lifted. I don't have to solve anything because there is nothing to solve. It's all a big mystery and if you can express the misery and the confusion truthfully, that might be something worth looking at.

JB: Too often we're looking for answers in plays when plays are really asking you to think. They're not actually looking to solve problems for you.

HENLEY: People say, "How do you want the audience to respond to your play." And I say, "As individuals!" I would feel horrible if everyone felt the same thing by the end of the day, and didn't have particular thoughts, particular notions, if some people weren't upset about something and some people enthralled by something.

JB: How do you start a play?

HENLEY: I think if you're any good you're aware of the notion that you can't start where you want to. I use a ton of notebooks. I write what is the theme and then I write all sorts of different themes; some of them never end up being the theme at all, and then I have images that I see. I see some stage images; like for Crimes of the Heart, I see a knife cutting into a lemon. I see there is a birthday cake. I'm not sure whose birthday it is.

Or I see somebody roped; somebody's going to hang themselves, but I don't know if they're going to live or not. Images. I do images. I do theme. I do the style, and I've really gotten to be much more cognizant about the style. I have a section in my notebook just called dialogue, things I've heard that are intriguing to me, of read, that might go in this play. And then, there's dialogue for this particular character--what do they do, what is their dream, and what are their feelings? There's preparation before you do it; getting to page one is quite a mess and takes, for me, the most time and is the hardest because they're not talking to you yet. You're kind of planting the seeds so they will talk. When they start talking, don't edit them for a while; let them talk.

JB: Do you know where a play is going when you start?

HENLEY: No. That's the scariest thing and the most thrilling.

JB: In other words, when you saw that birthday cake, you had no idea that was the end of the play?

HENLEY: No, I didn't know that was the end of the play. I did know by the time I got to the third act that Babe was going to try and kill herself, but I didn't know that she wasn't going to kill herself up until the moment she didn't. I thought, "No, it's going to be a tragedy. I thought it was a comedy, but I guess it's going to be a tragedy because it's a tragedy when a character kills himself." And then it turned. I always think that although this is very frustrating for the writer, it's really key to writing something good because if you don't know where it's going, that means the audience doesn't know where it's going either. You have to be clever enough to take it to a wonderful authentic place by just letting the characters tell you where they need to go.

JB: When you start, do you know the general subject matter?

HENLEY: Usually, but in the play I'm writing now, as well as in Exposed, it wasn't that clear. It became clear in Exposed that this is all taking place in a winter solstice, the darkest night of the year. The play I'm working on now I call The Men's Play because all I knew was I wanted to write a play about men because I don't understand men anyhow.

JB: When you write a play, do you have a specific message you want your reader to get from it? What do you want people to get from Crimes of the Heart?

HENLEY: When I write a play, I don't--since I have no idea what the play's going to be--have a message in mind. But in looking at Crimes of the Heart, I can say that my impression as a theatregoer would be that it is a play about these three sisters coming to grips with a lot that happened in their past that left them stunted in different ways and going on from there in the final moment of the play. That's pretty bad, but that's why I'm not a theatre critic!

JB: Talk a little bit about the role of Barnette in that play. If you were there while an actor was doing the part, what would you say to him?

HENLEY: I would say, "Don't err on going too sweet." He's very, very committed to winning this case. He's very fiery and there's also a rage in him. Barnette's often wrongly done as a sweet old Southern boy, and it's kind of icky.

JB: How much do you feel like you consciously engage with work from prior literary traditions? You mentioned that Crimes of the Heart is based on Three Sisters, and I was wondering if you intentionally wrote it that way of not.

HEYLEY: I think I probably did it subliminally with Crimes of the Heart. In fact, I know I did since I love Three Sisters so much and I'd rehearsed it over and over again, seeking the part of Irina. It was in my subconscious. Although I must admit that more recently in the play Impossible Marriage, I remember deliberately wanting to steal from Oscar Wilde. I went and read everything he wrote and I said, "Give me some of that and some of that. Sprinkle it on me." So I don't know. It's not usually very conscious, but it can be.

JB: What other kinds of dramatic literature influence you?

HENLEY: This is going to sound so boring, but Shakespeare. I've taken five years of Shakespeare class and . . . the more I just want to know him.

JB: What have you, as a playwright, learned from Shakespeare?

HENLEY: Shakespeare is one of those people, like Magic Johnson in basketball. You can't learn really because what they do is too superior to what humans can do. You just sit back in awe. Some playwrights you can read and kind of go, "Oh, here's how they do that." But Shakespeare ... how'd he write that? Oh, it's so humbling.

JB: Are any of your characters based on people you know--or knew?

HENLEY: Sometimes they evolved from a couple of people I know. A couple of times I've said that person is so appealing to me I'm going to write a character just like them. That's only happened a couple of times. But by the time the character comes out in the play, it's no longer the person at all. People say, "I'm Babe aren't I?" And I say, "We just met!"