Young children seem to be learning who to share this toy with and figure out how it works, while adolescents seem to be exploring some very deep and profound questions: 'How should this society work? How should relationships among people work?' The exploration is: 'Who am I, what am I doing?'
I've always explored various areas of society.
I think that's why I wanted to write about seventh grade. I'd say seventh grade is a time when kids are really exploring a lot and becoming aware of the world around them in a deeper way. And they just have sort of have a wider appreciation of what's happening around them. They are seeing themselves from the outside more than they had before.
When I was in college, I wasn't in a fraternity or anything. I always wanted to jump around to all different types of cliques.
A big part of what I wanted to do with this character was go from when I was a boy and try and develop into a man, really try and play him as a man who is on this search, on a journey of personal, spiritual, political, social discovery.
I'm social and I meet people and talk to people but I'm not looking for the ideal person to fit my mold and to raise my family with yet. I'm just kind of doing my thing and learning from the people I'm around and who I cross paths with.
I feel like it's important every once in a while to estrange ourselves from the familiar to remind ourselves of the potentialities of people, how many different ways there are of being.
I like books like 'The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher,' where the investigation of a crime becomes a way into an exploration of the society where the crime took place.
I was sort of a floater in high school; I feel like I tried my hand at all the different stereotypes or cliques. I'm grateful for the experience to walk in all those different shoes.
Adolescence is a time of active deconstruction, construction, reconstruction--a period in which past, present, and future are rewoven and strung together on the threads of fantasies and wishes that do not necessarily follow the laws of linear chronology.
The criminal, like the artist, is a social explorer.
I don't think it's the job of theatre at the moment to provide political propaganda; that would be simplistic. We have to explore our situation further before we will understand it.
I read about the history of England, of Manchester. I wanted to know how people here live, their interests.
I definitely want to go out and explore different personalities and different people.
I've always explored various areas of society. And I love the young people. And I had an empathy for prisoners and did concerts for them back when I thought that it would make a difference - you know? - that they really were there to be rehabilitated.
