(from screen 2) Now as before, he said, he has difficulty drawing background: “I can draw people in any pose imaginable, but I have trouble drawing tables and chairs. It's the same thing with writing.” He loves writing about people and relationships but is not one for description.
The children's books represent a turning point. “All my working life, whether in the cartoons or in the theater, what readers and audiences saw of me was the satiric, abrasive side,” he said. "There was no outlet to show the fun side, the affectionate side.” Doing these books, he discovered a freedom as, returning to his own childhood, he could show children challenging and overcoming parental authority and replacing cold reality with an active fantasy life.

Parallel to his work as an artist has been his career as a playwright. “My avocation,” he said, “was to write flop plays.” (His vocation, or at least his way to make money, was to write screenplays that were not filmed.) His first play, “Little Murders,” failed on Broadway but was a hit in an Off Broadway revival in 1969. Since then he has seesawed as a playwright, hitting a high with “Grown Ups” in 1981 and a low with “Elliot Loves” in 1990. That, he said, was his “retirement play,” and when it failed, he vowed not to work in the theater again.

But he remained staput together a revue of his sketches and directed it at the Vineyard Playhouse on Martha's Vineyard, where he and his wife (the writer Jennifer Allen) have a summer house. He cast it with family members and neighbors and had so much fun that he thought again about writing a play. For some time he had been looking for a way to write about his experiences in leftist politics in the 1950's.

Looking back on that period of McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee, he said: “Nobody turned out to be quite what they said they were. Clifford Odets could come to the Hotel Diplomat and make a `Waiting for Lefty' speech for his friend Joe Bromberg” — the actor J. Edward Bromberg — ” and have the entire audience, including me, standing on its feet, in tears. Then, in what seemed not more than a week later, he was telling the committee that Joe Bromberg recruited him into the Communist Party. In this difficult time, the people who you put your faith in turned out to be something other than who they claimed to be.”

The play evolved into something of a mystery, partly based on real people, including several in Mr. Feiffer's family. He said he finished the first draft in January 2001 and wondered whether anybody “was going to understand this atmosphere of paranoia.” Since 9/11, he said, “unfortunately, the play has become far more pertinent.” In recent weeks Mr. Feiffer and his director, Jerry Zaks, have been casting the play, heading toward an opening June 12 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.
As a child in the Bronx, Mr. Feiffer longed to live in Manhattan. For many years he has been a resident of the Upper West Side. During the day his studio, which has a view of the Hudson River, is flooded with sunlight. The room gives a new dimension to the word clutter. His drawing board, pitted and stained, is obscured by a long table filled with jars of pens and brushes, inks and paints. In the room he is surrounded by examples of his art. The only sign of modern invention is a photocopier; there is no computer.

When he wants to write, he walks to Central Park “I make Central Park an office,” he said. He sits on a bench, and on small pieces of cardboard he makes notes and writes scenes for plays and ideas for children's stories.

Working on a play or a book, he writes in longhand and often rewrites. In contrast, if he is not satisfied with a drawing, he will begin again. “With writing, it tends to improve every time you take a shot at it. I think there's a logic and orderliness to writing, which you don't have in drawing. That requires simply the energy and luck to get it right.”

In both arts, “I try to surrender completely to the impulse,” he said. “That's my aim — to make it seem as if it just appears, it just happens. That's what Astaire means to me: working so hard to make it seem effortless. It's all sleight of hand.”

Would he rather be Astaire than himself? “Who wouldn't?” he said. Late at night he gets his chance. After dinner he often goes back into his studio and sits at his drawing board, and he starts to improvise.

“It's the only work I do that has no text connected to it, where the drawing just lives by itself,” he said. "With me, it has to be a form of play, and this is the purest form of play, because it's not connected to an assignment. It's all free-form.“ Looking forward to the next evening, he said, “I put on some jazz — and it's as if I'm dancing.”

	“It's the only work I do that has no text connected to it, where the drawing just lives by itself,” he said. "With me, it has to be a form of play, and this is the purest form of play, because it's not connected to an assignment. It's all free-form. “ Looking forward to the next evening, he said, “I put on some jazz — and it's as if I'm dancing.”