John Guare first won fame at age 29 as the author of the award-winning play House of Blue Leaves (1971) , a distinctive mixture of family drama, black comedy and satire, successfully revived in New York in 1986 and again in 2011. For forty years, he has enjoyed unusually consistent success in the theater, as well as writing the award-winning screenplay of the 1980 film Atlantic City, and the screen adaptation of one of his greatest stage successes, Six Degrees of Separation. Throughout his career, Guare's work has been distinguished by wild humor, a sharp eye for the ambiguities and ambivalence of family relationships and an undisguised concern with issues of race and class in America. His 2010 play, A Free Man of Color, is a sprawling tale set in New Orleans, Haiti and France at the time of the Louisiana Purchase. In this podcast, recorded during the Academy of Achievement's 1996 Summit at Sun Valley, Idaho, he recalls his first efforts to become a playwright, starting at the age of 11.