Q & A with Eduardo Machado
Q:When and/or how did you know that you wanted to be a playwright?
A: I did and I didn't. I was always writing poems and tearing them up, thinking them silly. Since I was fourteen, I read at least three plays a week. When I was twenty-one, I wrote a play called RELICS, which took place at a funeral and had a lot of the same characters that are in BROKEN EGGS. A friend of mine dismissed it--the only person I showed it to-- and I quickly hid it.
I loved acting, but I felt the parts I played never really expressed who I was. That is not why I started writing, however. I started writing because acting was too ephemeral for me. I loved the fact that I could hold my script in my hands.
Q: What would you like Samuel French customers to know about your work?
A:I think I want them to know that my plays, though political, are very human. Although they are mostly about Cubans they reach all audiences, like plays about English people or Russians. My plays are written to be performed; reading them is not the same experience at all. Also, the struggle of people being exiled is a universal struggle. I want my plays to be performed by people of all ethnicities. Russians are not the only people that perform Chekhov and Spaniards are not the only people that perform Lorca.
Q: What inspires you to write a play?
A: Well, my play THE COOK was inspired by the people of my country, Cuba, and by the working class people of the world. When I was young I wrote to try to figure out why I was in so much pain and why my family had decided to become exiles. Sometimes I am inspired by great writers like Ibsen, Lorca, Williams, sometimes by the looks I see in people's faces when I walk past them. |
