JOLLY DAYS

John Guare

I've been cleaning out some old stuff; some articles clipped from various sources are on the ragged fringe of usefulness — yellowed with long presence in unattended folders. So here are some clips worth preserving before their final entropy into senseless scraps; from an article about John Guare:

Guare, about teaching at Yale:

The class was all about the three of us (Arthur Kopit, Derek Walcott) yelling at each other. We disagreed on every student's play. And it was wonderful. It showed them there was no one way to do anything.

About his next play: “You can't predict where your mind is going to be….Everything deals with what you're afraid of. Same old fears. They find new costumes, new names…I'm writing to find out… [what he is afraid of]”

About Henry James,

[James talks about…] the balloon of experience, how you can go as far out as you want as long as you keep that string connected to Earth. But if you let the balloon float free, you're lost. Craft is that string. Having feelings ain't enough.