"No one who believes in the greatness of certain plays would go to any one of our houses to enjoy them. They exist as thundering productions in the mind only. We know they might be done (King Lear, for example, should be played by Ernest Hemingway), but one also knows that way lies nightmare, madness, and no hurricane's spout. Our theatre is cancer gulch. Anyone who has worked in it, felt the livid hate-twisted nerves of the actresses, the fag-ridden spirit of the actors, the gulping mannerless yaws of our directors, hysterical at resistance, ponderous at exposition, and always psychoanalytical, must admit that yes, at its best, our theatre is a rich ass and/or hole, at its worst, the heavens recoil."
-Norman Mailer, reviewing Genet's The Blacks in the Voice in 1961 (h/t Adam Feldman)
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