I daresay I could write a play attacking Nixon. But we all hope that he will go away in '72, so it would be a play with no interest after '72. When you've got a society that's so uptight that all it cares about is self preservation, it's far more important to write about that situation than to make specific attacks on Nixon and the ghettos. Nixon and the ghettos are particular horrors that have come about because people are so closed down about themselves. If we can get them to be open about themselves, the rest will come automatically.
Serious theater is meant to change people, to change their perception of themselves.
You see, I write plays about how people waste their lives. One of the points of the play is to make us aware of our mortality. And that bothered the critics. In 'Virginia Woolf,' they saw people they knew, not themselves. Bu this play is not about others.