I guess we all feel like underdogs. I remember being a freshman at Brown University and not knowing what a WASP was. We were reading an Edward Albee play, and - it was just a moment of accepting, certainly that I wasn't very worldly, but also that a lot of the plays that I'd been reading, let's say other kinds of family plays, were speaking a foreign language.
Stephen KaramSo much of great American drama has been about a certain kind of dysfunctional family, and maybe my interests are in the kind of strange dysfunction that exists even among deeply functional families.
Stephen KaramSuddenly you're at church and you hear someone pray, "For gays and lesbians, that they might realize their [sins]...." That's happening less and less now, but all it takes is one of those when you're nine, ten, eleven, twelve - and it's hard to describe to people who aren't, because of course if you're not gay, an eleven- or twelve-year-old wouldn't even remember that that happened.
Stephen KaramWriting plays for me is often an act of looking at basement-level fears in terms of where they come from.
Stephen Karam