Two Playwrights Talk Shop
This an in-depth interview with yours truly by playwright, director & blogger, James Hutchison (published Jan 14th, 2019):
JAMES HUTCHISON: You’ve wanted to be a writer for a long time?
MARYANNE POPE: Oh yeah, I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was seven. I think that was probably when I first thought of it. But I never really got the concept that you actually have to sit down and write. It was always something in the distance that I wanted to do.
JAMES: As far as your writing career goes your husband’s death seems to be a marker. There was a life before that and a life after that.
MARYANNE: After I graduated from the University of Calgary when I was twenty-five and up until John’s death when I was thirty-two I wanted to try and write a novel. I had no interest in playwriting or screenwriting or anything like that. So, I started to work on a novel but I didn’t really know what I was doing and I was just creating a female protagonist who’s unhappy with her life and wanted to change the world and become a writer.
And I wasn’t unhappy with my life, but I was unhappy with the fact that I wasn’t finding the time to write because by this time John and I were married. We’d bought a house. The financial pressure was on. The family pressure was on — are you going to have kids? You’ve got the mortgage now…
