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[Garcés continues]... a short story. It was awful. But I'd write a play, at least a first draft of a play, a short play, fairly quickly, and then I'd go back and work it work it work it, but it was more fun. It just was more alive in me. And because I was an actor I had access to space, people, connections, downtown, small spaces, but I had access, so I started putting [my plays] up.

I fell into directing, which completely came out of writing, because I needed someone to articulate the work on stage, and sometimes I didn't have anyone else, so I would just do it my damn self. I was young and just trying to figure it out, working on the fly, and I started directing my own shit here and there, and people started asking me to direct their plays, and it just seemed part of an organic process.

I've never set out to be a director. I've never looked for work as a director in my life. I've never asked anybody to hire me, it's just sort of built organically. I get asked by young people, How do you make a career as a director, because I'm seen more as a director than a writer in [British accent] the American theatre, though that's changing, happily. I don't have a fucking clue. How do you set out to be a director? No idea. Direct plays. You get to know writers and writers ask you to direct their damn plays. So directing is directly connected to my work, that's why I do new plays. I'm not interested in directing Henry the Fourth.

Or the Fifth.

Or the Eighth. And putting my vision, stamp, whatever bullshit on it. I suppose I do have a vision as a director, but much more so as a writer.

LRS: How are they related?

Garcés: I'm not interested in being an auteur and imposing my vision on the text that isn't asked for. But given my druthers, I'm interested in the white space on stage just like I'm interested in the white space on the page. And leaving a lot of room for the audience to fill things up. I'm not interested in big sets, I'm not interested in a lot of bells and whistles. I'm interested in the actor's body and how it interacts with the text and with the audience. I'm not interested in the fourth wall, remotely, at all. I'm not interested in the artificiality of suspension of disbelief, which I don't believe in. I think it might have existed a couple hundred of years ago...so get rid of it. Deal with what's really going on, which is a group of people in a room watching another group of people do something. We're all disbelieving. Dealing with that is interesting to me, as a writer and as a director.

LRS: You work manically, I mean a lot. Of all the things you've done, what things jump out as the most significant and altering events for you?

Garcés: I suppose one of the things I talk about a lot, is my experience working in Chiapas, Sna Jtz'ibajom, which is a Mayan writers' collective, working with them to create two plays. That had a really profound effect on me. It's a group that works by utter consensus, which was hard for me.

LRS: Why?

Garcés: Because I tend to make a decision and go. Which can be a fault, but is a virtue for a director, especially in a place like New York where your job is to make decisions categorically and live with them. And then if your decision was wrong, either live with it or change it. By definition. You just don't have any choice. Which doesn't necessarily make the best art, although sometimes it does. Directing ultimately is the art of the possible, as opposed to say writing, which is the art of whatever the fuck you want, you know—the art of the impossible, perhaps. But you only direct what you can do.

So it slowed me down. Getting people doing things that they had never done, that people had never seen. Mayan women, for example, raising their voices loudly and looking people in the eye—just in and of itself that was so profoundly dramatic and exciting. And to really feel you were part of something important both aesthetically and socially was pretty great.

LRS: It really was a moment of a play changing the world.

Garcés: At the same time it was an extremely lonely experience. Living in a small room by myself. I'm not and don't pretend to be Mayan or Mexican. The company speaks Spanish and two different Mayan languages with each other, and you're very much welcome, but at the same time you're not, you're emphatically not. The Mexicans in town were not thrilled to have me there; interacting with Mayans I was definitely suspect. And I wasn't really down with hanging out with European tourists. I got a lot of writing done; it was fruitful in that way. But you wind up thinking a lot. I didn't bring any music with me. I didn't want to bring my life with me. I didn't bring any books with me. Although one time I brought Finnegan's Wake, which was insane and weird, agonizing through chapters in Chiapas. The maid thought I was crazy. I'd be in my room reading out loud. Oh God, embarrassing. It was both one of the most communal experiences I've had, and one of the loneliest I've had at the same time. The more you are accepted by the group, the more you realize you're not part of the group. I'd love to go back, and I'd do it again, but it was a harrowing and wonderful experience at the same time.

I got to create a little Clifford Odets moment with people with signs. It was just more exciting to create work in that context, than in New York, where sometimes I feel like I'm creating work for a specific, small, closed circle of supposedly smart people.

LRS: This sounds like exactly the kind of work you'll be doing at Cornerstone.

Garcés: That's certainly why I've leapt into that particular fire. And I'll certainly be able to do more writing. I'm looking forward to having some mental space. I'll have my two plays going up in New York, I'll be going to Manila in May, but from June till February [2007], I don't have any freelance directing jobs lined up, and I'm pretty psyched about that.

LRS: It seems regardless of how much money is in your bank account, there's still a punk aspect to what you are. Even if magically there were a MacArthur Grant in there. I don't know that people really understand that that's what theatre outside of Broadway and some Off-Broadway really is for a lot of people. It's punk because who is giving you anything for it. It's truly for the love and it's truly because you don't really fucking care what people think. Any final words? Anything else you want to leave us with?

Garcés: I don't know. "Meaninglessness is the first principle." That's a quote. Paul Auster. Right on. Thanks for listening to me for...ever.