Where are you happiest?

Cooktown. The fish and chips at the wharf are the best in the world, and the drive up the Bloomfield track is always uplifting. Otherwise on a train going pretty much anywhere.

What is your favourite music?

Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Parsifal. Supertramp.

What is your favourite book?

Portnoy’s Complaint, Sabbath’s Theater, Hamlet, Uncle Vanya. They’re all funny and cruel.

And your favourite author?

Philip Roth, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Tolstoy.

And your favourite literary hero and heroine?

Hamlet, Alex Portnoy, Mickey Sabbath, Sonya in Uncle Vanya, Cleopatra, Anna and Levin in Anna Karenina. They all see through the crap and suffer for it, but the suffering is better than living in a fog.

Name an early literary idol or influence whom you no longer admire – or vice versa.

I went through a German phase that included loving Brecht’s plays, then realised they’re obvious and outdated. He’s a great poet, though.

How old were you when your first book appeared?

Twenty-eight. It was The Kid, my first play. It’s a bit overwritten (actually all my plays are overwritten; actually all plays are overwritten), but I still like it a lot.

What, if anything, impedes your writing?

Everything that’s an excuse not to sit there and do it.

How do you regard publishers?

Unless you become a set text, there’s not much of a market for plays. But Currency Press does its best to keep the flag flying. And it’s good to have things in print, it helps fight the view that the writer of plays is just an irritating minor contributor to the theatre experience. Writing plays is a literary activity with the added bonus, if you’re lucky, of them being performed.

What do you think of the state of criticism?

The Internet has greatly improved the breadth of discussion.

If you had your time over again, would you choose to be a writer?

Depends. If the things I’ve done in this life still existed while I was doing the time again then no – the next time I’d do Law and be rich.

What do you think of writers’ festivals?

I’ve only been to one, but it was at Byron Bay, so I had a nice time. Playwrights don’t interest people that much. They’re all there to see novelists and (auto)biographers.

Do you feel artists are valued in our society?

I think artists should be contrary, which can mean you’re not even liked, let alone valued. Maybe art is valued, as something necessary, but individuals come and go, in and out of fashion, out of print, rediscovered. Art lasts, life doesn’t.

What are you working on now?

I’ve done an adaptation and English libretto of Mozart’s The Magic Flute for Oz Opera, which I’m directing as well. Rehearsals start in April.