Tim Robbins

I felt that this was such a unique and extraordinary time that we were living in that it was up at that level of Greek tragedy and Greek comedy.

The degree to which this whole world locked down, this has never happened in human history before.

The coordinated locking down of societies throughout the world

You know, I was seeing this develop.

I was like, there's got to be one country that just says, no, we're not doing this.

And I just was blown away that it had this kind of coordinated...

and that scared me a little bit.

And I was like, well, what is this really about?

What is this about?

And so those questions led me to ask those questions in the play, using the chorus as a means to figure out these people who, lovely singing together at the beginning of the play, they sound beautiful, and then they...

they are told they have to separate.

And so how does a chorus harmonize when they are kept from each other?

I have complete freedom.

And I've always, from the very start, held that to be the most important thing.

We started the Actors Gang out of UCLA in 1982.

I'm talking about eight or nine young punk rock infused actors that just wanted to make some noise and have fun and tell stories.

And we did this play called Ubu Wa, Ubu the King.

This was the first play we did.

And we did it in this dark street in Hollywood at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.

And it was a big success.