But when I got to SMU and decided to take a playwriting class, I said this isn't a bad idea. IfI write characters, they could be as dumb as me, and I don't have to be very smart.

But when I got to SMU and decided to take a playwriting class, I said this isn't a bad idea. IfI write characters, they could be as dumb as me, and I don't have to be very smart.

I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, really in suburbia, so my mother was in community theatre plays.

I tried to start a theatre in LA and failed miserably, but I was probably not meant to raise money.

In movement class, you had to lie on the floor and get your alignment in to pass the class.

The next thing I wrote was in a writing class at night school. It was about a poor woman who worked at a dime store and who was all alone for Christmas in Laurel, Mississippi.

And all writing is creating or spinning dreams for other people so they won't have to bother doing it themselves.