John Guare
John Guare
John Guareis an Irish American playwright. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, and Landscape of the Body. His style, which mixes comic invention with an acute sense of the failure of human relations and aspirations, is at once cruel and deeply compassionate. In his foreword to a collection of Guare's plays, film director Louis Malle writes:...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth5 February 1938
CountryUnited States of America
There's no American playwright after 1945 who wasn't profoundly affected - who didn't have their DNA changed by Tennessee Williams.
Ballet is always about the realm of possibilities, the realm of what the human body can do, what the human spirit can do. And it's about listening, it's about listening to remarkable music and how we respond to that.
How much of your life can you account for? My life is a collage of unaccounted for brush strokes; I am all random”.
I wanted to be a Bride of Christ but I guess now I'm a young divorcee.
I think that every year that the New York City Ballet is alive is worthy of celebration. Because otherwise the terrible thing is just that we take it for granted.
Show business offers more solid promises than Catholicism.
People go to see beautiful paintings to see how much they cost. Wow. The practical value is that it shows you what the human spirit can do.
The Atlantic Ocean was something then.
I only do business with the people I do business with. The people I do business with find out I do business with the people I don't do business with.... I can't do business with you.
Sometimes you have to protect the life of the play. It seems like spelling out mysterious, musical details can destroy a play by making the motivations too clear, too simplex.
Oh, I never use a seat belt. I don't believe in gravity.
The imagination says listen to me. I am your darkest voice. I am your 4 a.m. voice. I am the voice that wakes you up and says this is what I'm afraid of. Do not listen to me at your peril.... The imagination is not our escape. On the contrary, the imagination is the place we are all trying to get to.
I am the same artist with the same nagging questions I had in my early 20's. What's real and what isn't? How do we tell what's real in our lives? How do we see things as they are? What is my role in life? If the Signature hadn't forced the issue by devoting its season to my plays, I could at least believe I had changed. Really, they're all the same! What is SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION but THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES with money?
I think a playwright must be his own dramaturg. I believe in a theater where the director and the playwright work together to create what they need.