For a long time, my shows were about people walking out or about getting my gigs canceled or having the presenter not wanting to pay me. |
I'm always surprised by things that happen to my work. |
I write for an audience that likes what I like, reads what I read, thinks about the things I think about. In many ways, this puts me in opposition to the people who go to the theater generally. |
I write, but I also act. |
I'm very underground. |
As soon as the dirt is hitting the casket, it'll all be forgotten. |
If you say city to people, people have no problem thinking of the city as rife with problematic, screwed-up people, but if you say suburbs - and I'm not the first person to say this, it's been said over and over again in literature - there's a sense of normalcy. |
If we all knew we were going to live to be 150 years old, we'd all approach our lives very differently. |
I love playing other people's work. I love acting. |
Well, the real Eric Bogosian is pretty self-conscious of himself. |
I'm not hip, I'm not cool, I'm not glib. |
I do write about people who are complex and are striving with something and can't quite get past their own stuff, which would be a proxy for myself because that's what the deal is with me. |
It's a mental fake-out to myself. I make believe I'm making a new show so I forget the material I was working on and make up some fresh material. |
I started acting when I was in high school, started writing when I got to New York in 1975. |
Ensemble is hard to do. It's like 3-D chess. |
I know that I'm inadequate, but I never thought that at seventeen. I thought I was doing the best I could. I thought I was being idealistic. |
If all I ever wrote about was inner city freaks, I think it would be dishonest. |
The world intrudes in my brain daily. Since my brain is dripping with all kinds of stuff that's out there in the world, that I can't seem to be able to shut out, it has to end up being in my work as well. |
I write my plays to create an excuse for full-tilt acting and performing. |
I'm not a light-hearted person, so I can't think light-hearted at work. |