I like to think I'm a humanist. That doesn't mean that's not an activist, especially now. But I'm a Martin Buber person, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber who wrote a very important book, I And Thou. The basic idea is that we're in relationship to one another from the very very beginning, from our first baby reach.  

And so that I—I and you, I and thou—I, when I look at you, have a choice. Are you a thing? Or are you another human being? And so my work has really been about that. And so I hope that it certainly extends into the plays that are not based on real people, and that I'm not breathing into. Because it's implied, if I play a rodeo cowboy, or Lance Armstrong, or if I play the sister of someone who was murdered, it's implied that I believe that this possible bridge exists. Right? Because I'm taking on this other person and trying very hard to do it without so-called "judgement."  

But I hope that when people see Basil Biggs, they will see that the same thing operates in this play. In looking for fictional characters, for example, there are two Quakers in the play, there's a love affair in the play that can't happen because of race, but I have a Black person and a white person falling in love. I have a woman who comes from Kentucky to try to find her dead son and her dead husband, the husband being Confederate, the son being a Union soldier, and having a conversation with my Great-Great-Grandfather and these Black men amidst these dead bodies and she's insisting that they see her as more than just a Confederate wife. 

I hope that in all of my work that this is obvious that I believe in the possibility of crossing the bridge between me and you.