Sir Tony and the American Dream

Extract

People in Minneapolis were always asking me, “What does a Resident Playwright do?” And although I could usually come up with some high-sounding, evasive answer, I never found one that satisfied me. The Guthrie Theatre did not find an answer either, and my three years there were doubtless as frustrating to them as they were unproductive for me. Typically, our failure happened more from a lack of communication than from any real wish to do harm to one another, the result, perhaps, of a set of fortuitous circumstances that neither of us was prepared to accept.

I came to the Minnesota Theatre Company in the fall of 1962, while a student at the university, before the Guthrie was even a building. In the long winter months, we used to go down behind the Walker Art Center and look at that black skeleton rising out of the snow.