Richard Greenberg
Richard Greenberg
Richard Greenbergis an American playwright and television writer known for his subversively humorous depictions of middle-class American life. He has had more than 25 plays premiere on and off-broadway in New York City and eight at the South Coast Repertory Theatre, including The Violet Hour, Everett Beekin, and Hurrah at Last...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth22 February 1958
CountryUnited States of America
bank people playwright steadily
I want to be a playwright the way people are bank tellers. I want to keep doing it and have it go steadily and smoothly.
slower
I do think the past changes at a slower rate. It sits a little more still for its portrait.
rupture
The idea of a rupture between acts occurs in a number of my plays.
conveying entire life onstage sort time trying
I'm sort of anti-Aristotelian. I want to get an entire life onstage while conveying a sense of how time feels, how unstoppable it is, and how we don't really know what's going on because as we're trying to weave, it's weaving us.
settings
The implication is that these settings would actually be hospitable to life,
formed seeing time
I was formed by 'The Forsyte Saga' marathon. There was something about seeing all those events telescoped that was unbelievably moving: that sense of time as something that can be tinkered with.
stopped
I thought if I stopped writing, ... the world would explode.
time
By the time I started writing plays, Broadway was never an expectation, so it's never been central.
alienation extension people
People talk about alienation in the city. Diners are a place where you feel comfortable, an extension of your house.
dangerous family good less mean review trained
My friends and family have been so well trained that they know I really mean it when I say that I don't care if the review is good, because that can be as dangerous as when it's bad. It's less demoralizing, but it can be just as confusing.
driven surface
Everything on and under the surface is driven by the tides,
aura catch wanting
I think I can be an intimidating energy in the room. I think I come in with an aura of wanting results because as the playwright, I know how it goes, and there's the thought, 'Why can't they catch up?'
commission era hundred scripts
I started in the era when Hollywood reveled in being the most cost-inefficient industry on the planet. They used to commission a hundred scripts for every one they made.
ambition play crafts
A play gets on Broadway by fluke. And you don't even start out with that ambition. When I do a play, the intention is just to put it up somewhere.