Top 40 Stephen Karam Quotes

In writing ‘The Humans,’ I obsessed over the financial district and the architecture.

Because I didn’t go to graduate school or have mentorship out of college, meeting other playwrights and developing those friendships as a result of being a ‘grown up’ playwright – that’s become an essential community for me. My contemporaries are all my mentors whether they know it or not.

Under Todd Haimes’ leadership, Roundabout created a black-box theater whose sole mission was to house premieres by writers who are just starting out and have zero name recognition.

I like creating the illusion that suddenly I’ve just done five things at once.

I had spent four months in Cedar City, Utah, right after graduation as an intern at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. It’s a town that has many people living the polygamous lifestyle.

I think being gay has resulted in gay characters standing front and center in all of my work.

‘Sons of the Prophet’ is a dark comedy about human suffering. The play explores the particularly messy portions of life – the times where you find yourself coping with multiple life issues, and before any of them can be resolved, two more show up on your plate. We’ve all been there, I’d wager.

Sometimes you realize you don’t give people in your hometown enough credit.

The human condition is endlessly fascinating to me, and the existential horrors of life are what drive our imaginations and theater in general.

Everyone will always have ideas about how to make your work better. Everyone has advice about how to end your play differently. Start it differently. And it’s not about right or wrong. At the end of the day, it’s your baby, and you know what’s best.

To see professional actors do my work, to take it seriously – that was the thing that made me think playwriting could actually be what I do. It’s not a profession that has some sort of clear career track, like, ‘This is what you do to be a playwright.’

I was sending off my plays almost like an 8-year-old would send letters to Santa Claus. So it was a bit of a miracle when the Blank Theatre Company actually called and selected a terrible little play that I wrote.

I didn’t quite fit in in any particular, specific way. I was a gay teenager who was into drama.

I don’t go into rehearsal for a production unless I’ve figured everything out.

I lived in a basement duplex on 96th Street on the Upper West Side.

To me, ‘Glee’ is totally fantastic.

If you fail on your own terms, that’s a pretty good way to go down.

Writing a play to get to Broadway and have a national tour is a sure way to write a terrible, terrible play.

I don’t come from a family of artists.

I think it’s scary to be alive, but also exhilarating and joyful.

That the best piece of art a person is capable of making is the one that only they could create.

When you’re the artsy, weirdo, introverted outsider growing up, you don’t fit into your community.

‘Columbinus’ was four years of my life, collaborating with a lot of people and gathering lots of information.

My own journey as a writer has been the discovery of different theatrical voices. Chekhov was a revelation. Tennessee Williams was another one. We read ‘The Glass Menagerie’ in high school, and I still remember the cover.

I’ve always viewed ‘Sons of the Prophet’ as the first part of a larger trilogy – not three plays dependent on each other but three stand-alone plays connected by theme and, likely, further adventures of the Douaihy family.

All of my plays are deeply autobiographical. But it’s not straight autobiography.

In terms of smaller changes over time, I think good plays are like poems. Every syllable counts. So I wrestle with word choice, rhythm in final drafts.

‘The Cherry Orchard’ is a masterpiece, and there can never be too many adaptations.

Coming home for me isn’t, like, one family dinner. It’s about am I gonna see 50 relatives, or am I gonna see 85?

To be totally honest, I thought I would have a Broadway debut in the distant, distant future, maybe in my 60s or 70s when somebody revived one of my off-Broadway plays with a star.

The best thing about being nominated in a category like best new play is realizing there were enough new plays to make a category.

I don’t know how to produce work if it’s not something that’s deeply scaring me or troubling me.

Until I have a family or a mortgage, I’m trying to keep my lifestyle simple and my apartment affordable so that I can continue to focus on theater. That’s as good as it gets for me.

I hope to be known as a writer who told the truth.

I was the worst-dressed person in Scranton. I was a total nerd. Obviously, I got picked on, but I was also able to find my own cluster of friends, and I think when that happens, you get by just fine.

Good actors can tell you more about your play than 1,000 hours alone at your desk.

I think that I’m going to write a bigger thing, and then I end up writing about people, and the bigger thing recedes into the background, and hope that it’s still there.

To be honest, it’s more fun being the underdog.

I was not exposed to a lot of culture. The shows we saw in high school, like ‘Phantom of the Opera’ and ‘Miss Saigon,’ were thrilling. But my love affair with theater started with seeing a production of ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ that my sister was in.

If there’s ever a moment when I am an Anglophile, it’s when I see so many theatres in this country that have what I would call federal funding.