Letting go

A Guardian profile of playwright Martin Crimp continues the theme of ownership of one's work once it has gone out into the public domain:

...this is the other great paradox of his life. No matter how much he obsesses over every word, ultimately his work must be handed over to a production team. No wonder he has come to think of his plays as a brood of children. A play, he says, "contains the genetic material of the writer, but that doesn't mean you are entitled to control it. The plays depart - they go out and find their own way. You might find they do very strange things, but you have to learn to let go".