Neil LaBute interview

In The Independent, Rhoda Koenig talks to Neil LaBute about his play, Fat Pig, which has just opened in London.

LaBute, 46, seems comfortable in his skin. He has the fluent speech, affable manner, and underlying firmness of someone good at his former occupation, teaching. The geniality cracks only when I say later, that it will be hard for me to ask my next question without being insulting. "Then don't," he says. It's a command, not a suggestion. I ask it anyway.

In the preface to Fat Pig, LaBute writes that he once lost 60 pounds, only to turn into a "preening fool" who spent his time exercising rather than writing. The anxiety that motivated his overeating – as well as his writing – had disappeared. "I'm not saying creativity is entirely linked to personal unhappiness, but..." LaBute waves away the idea that he has to be unhappy or angry to write. "I live peacefully and manufacture the anger."