I was sent out to the library to get various books, I had to go to the art galleries to look at paintings. We went to other theaters when we didn't have a matinee of our own. It was jolly good training. Also, you hope that the dialogue you eventually start to write is immediate and not repetitive. In a really good play no one explains anything.
People talk across each other in a funny sort of way.
Really the dialogue is just pointing towards things, I think, or pointing out character obviously. So yes, the theater was tremendously helpful. I think I've probably polished it up more, honed it more. In the early ones, what I was doing was . . . I'd stick the plot in the middle of my life, and that was interesting.