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me to discuss the ideas in it"), the relationship between the two characters Doris and George appears to be more "married" than illicit. It's not the same bed we see them sharing over the years (there's no explicit sex in the play); it's one another's embarrassment, guilt, success, grief, failure, even a pregnancy--hers by her husband.

"Most people," Slade told me, "buy Erica Jong's well-publicized fantasy of the faceless, nameless roll in the hay with no messy involvements. "It's a great fantasy, but it doesn't work with human beings. They come in with feelings of guilt and loyalty. They have a past as well as a present."

You began to understand that the past is important to Bernard Slade. He told me, for example, of having once been asked about his long marriage on a Canadian TV interview..."I found myself replying, 'we have 2 dogs, one is 14-years-old and the other is 16-years old. Our car is 10-years-old. We just seem to keep things.' Afterwards, Jill asked me indignantly if I couldn't find something more positive to say, but I felt that was positive. I can understand the excitment and novelty of discovering a new person, exploring new feelings, finding out about another life; but there's a kind of shorthand that grows up in a long relationship that I value."

To illustrate his point, Bernard Slade told two stories about friends of his who had recently split with their wives. "One friend told me he'd stopped dating because he didn't think he could stand 'one more girl asking me what sign I was born under?' The other confessed that he knew he was in trouble when on the 'fourth time I told my life's story--I fell asleep.' "

In Same Time, Next Year, Bernard Slade hit on the perfect compromise -- a long, nonthreatening extramarital relationship which combines continuity and novelty--"At the end of the play," Slade told me, "even though Doris and George have known each other for 25 years, they've been together for only five weeks."

It's interesting that the idea for Same Time, Next Year came out of a holiday Bernard and his wife Jill took at an isolated inn near Mendocino. "Because of its remoteness, we started to talk to each other in a new way, and I got the idea of 
[[line]]

PLAYBILL   May 1975

ARTHUR T. BIRSH--publisher
JOAN ALLEMAN RUBIN--editor-in-chief
CYNTHIA CARTY--program coordinator
LEO LERMAN--senior editor
WALTER VATTER--associate editor
MARY F. SEATON--assistant to the publisher
THOMAS A. STEINFELD--national sales director
L. ROBERT CHARLES--general sales director
ELAINE KLEIN--director of special sales
RUSSELL CANNIZZARO--comptroller
MIMI HOROWITZ--publication coordinator

PLAYBILL Magazine is published monthly in New York, Boston and Philadelphia. New York edition of Playbill is published by American Theatre Press, Inc., 151 East 50th Street, N.Y., N.Y. 10022. 212-751-9550. President & Treasurer: Arthur T. Birsh; Vice-Pres.: Steven J. Kumble; Secretary: Mary F. Seaton. Printed in U.S.A. Copyright (c) American Theatre  Press, Inc. 1975. All rights reserved.

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4

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