SOURCE: An interview in The New Yorker, Vol. XLVII, No. 19, 26 June 1971, pp. 30-1.

In the following conversation, conducted at the time of the New York production of Dream on Monkey Mountain, Walcott elucidates the play's themes and discusses the person who inspired the character Makak.

Derek Walcott, author of the Obie Award-winning play The Dream on Monkey Mountain, is a tall, lithe West Indian of forty-one who has striking hazel eyes, longish hair (sideburns but no Afro), and a kind of casual, mussed elegance that stamps him as a man of the theatre. He has had two books of poetry published commercially, and one of plays (which includes the text of Monkey Mountain), and is the founder-director of the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, a group of twenty-odd actors who travel around the Caribbean presenting plays to audiences that often have very little contact with live drama. We met Mr...