Write Your Own Will Eno Play!

1. Begin with an attack on the conventions of the fourth wall. No one’s ever done that before!
2. Make an awkward introduction and insult the audience.
3. Quickly temper with self-deprecating remarks.
4. Add grandiose gesture of universal significance. (Make sure it contains no actual universal significance.)
5. Begin hypothetical story about a child growing up.
6. Make it clear this child is you.
7. Segue into awkward details of your sex life.
8. By now your audience is bored. Tell them they are bored.
9. More insults.
10. Rob your non-hypothetical child of his/her innocence.
11. More sex life.
12. More childhood.
13. Use both to ask a basic question about existence.
14. Don’t answer it.
15. Sulk.
16. Add profanity to taste.

Congratulations! Now you’re a theatre genius!

Don’t Believe Me?

I recommend reading Eno’s monologues Thom Pain, Lady Grey, and Mr. Theatre in that order, as published. I did so a month ago and was inspired to jot the following:

Like pulling a quarter out of your ear and dropping it down a sewer grate. Then saying “I meant to do that.”

If your reputation as a genius playwright is based upon your tendency to pretend to fail, then fail again, then fail repeatedly, can you ever not succeed?