Atw - Downstage Center

John Guare talks about his two Broadway plays of the past season: considering how the world has caught up with and changed audience responses to "The House of Blue Leaves" and which portion of the play is drawn directly from his own life, as well as the origin of "A Free Man of Color" and whether it's his practice to write plays based on ideas suggested by others. He also discusses his development as a playwright while at Georgetown University and the Yale School of Drama; why being an Aquarius was instrumental in the start of his professional career; his never-completed collaboration with Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein; how "Two Gentlemen of Verona", a musical with 37 songs, was never meant to be a musical; finding a home at The Public Theatre and his conflicted emotions about being a part of the institution at that time, where such plays as "Landscape of the Body" and "Marco Polo Sings a Solo" premiered; how place affected his writing of the "Lydie Breeze" plays and why he chose to revisit and rewor