Salon questionnaire

Pushing 60.

Provenance?

I'm a New Brunswicker; I was born in the old Moncton Hospital, grew up in Shediac, studied English and fine arts at Mount Allison. Now I split my time between Toronto, because I love my city and I work in the arts, and Lunenburg County, because I love the people and the landscape - they keep me sane.

Why writing?

I've always written, from the time I was a kid. And I love moving back and forth between fiction and theatre.

What was your breakthrough moment?

St. Patrick's Day, 1984. I was watching a play by Caryl Churchill at the Public Theater in New York and realized that the story I needed to tell needed to be told in a play. I went across the street to a bar and began writing my first play, Rubber Dolly, then and there. The place was filled with people drinking green beer and wearing those little bowler hats that have always made me think of Charlie Chamberlain.

What would you be if you weren't a writer?

The older I get, the more interested I am in the extremely old. Maybe I'd be involved in some aspect of archaeology. I'd give my eye teeth to know first-hand about the work being done at a place like Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. It's just so interesting.

What are you working on next?

I'm working on a version of that old staple of the theatre, the revenge play. I want to explore the very human need for eye-for-an-eye retribution and look at our capacity for restorative justice.

What place on Earth inspires you?

It's just impossible to narrow this to a single place, but a partial list would have to include: the south shore of Nova Scotia, Manhattan, the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, Yukon and a whole slew of art galleries, museums and opera houses, where my perceptions have been forever altered.

What place in New Brunswick inspires you?

The Shediac of my childhood. It permeates absolutely everything I write.

Secret indulgence?

Bourbon. And hymns.

Your favourite hero of fiction?

Another impossible question because whole lists of characters - from the likes of Dickens, Austin, Dostoevsky and the Brontës - have remained vivid for more than 40 years. Pierre in War and Peace, Ishvar and Om in A Fine Balance, the narrator of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Philip Roth's Nathan Zuckerman - who could choose one? Most recently, Lisa Moore's Helen O'Mara in February affected me very deeply. But the two characters who I've probably thought about more than any others are George in Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man, which I found in the Moncton Public Library when I was in high school - and made all the difference in the world to me, and Frankie in Carson McCuller's The Member of the Wedding, who spoke to me directly when I was an adolescent.

What is your greatest extravagance?

Good oolong and white teas.

What is your greatest fear?

I'll just quote Bette Davis: "Old age ain't no place for sissies."

Greatest joy?

My partner, artist Doug Guildford.

Your favourite play?

A third impossible question. It's a list that would have to start with my favourite Shakespeare. In the '60s, even in Shediac, you could buy mass-market paperback editions of new plays at the local drugstore - Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee have been favourites of mine ever since. There are plays that influenced me when I first fell in love with live theatre, plays by Lanford Wilson, David French and Michel Tremblay; plays like Wallace Shawn's Aunt Dan and Lemon and John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation that blew me away when they were first produced; and plays by my old friends from the Tarragon Theatre, wonderful playwrights like Joan MacLeod and Colleen Murphy, that I cherish. Then there are plays by Chekov that are so great I can't imagine a world without them. And I can't imagine the idea of a favourite play without mentioning Charles Ludlam's work for the Ridiculous Theatrical Company. His plays make me laugh myself sick.

What are you reading?

I'm reading a novel and a collection of papers about the legal justice system. The novel is Philip Roth's I Married a Communist. The essays are edited by Margaret E. Beare in a book called Honouring Social Justice: Honouring Dianne Martin.

What's on your iPod?

A great deal of everything that's pre-21st century. Lots of baroque and classical music - Bach's cantatas, Beethoven and Haydn - and Schubert. There's a lot of jazz, Sarah Vaughan, old Aretha and pop music from the 1930s, which I love. Vocalists like Annette Hanshaw and the Boswell Sisters were terrific musicians. Also a fair amount of gospel from the '50s and '60s: Mahalia Jackson, Marion Williams and Dorothy Love Coates. It's the craziest, most joyful and heartfelt singing imaginable, even to my atheist ears. And a rotating series of arts magazine podcasts from the BBC. They're fantastically good, the sort of thing that the CBC used to do so well.

What talent would you like to have?

I would love to be able to sing.

What is the greatest public misconception about writing?

That it pays money.

Your most treasured possession?

A beautiful set of nesting tables that my father made and six drawings of a swimmer that Doug did for me.

What is your motto?

"It just goes to show you that people are no damn good."

How would you like to die?

Without fear.

Your favourite theatre?

The Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, because it was where I cut my teeth as a playwright and where I met, hung out and fell in love with so many people who have mattered so much to me. s

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