My family is in the funeral home business, and that’s what I do too –– I perform burials in Philadelphia. I tell people how I make sense of the tragedies –– and what mystery remains. I grew up in the suburbs and as a child I watched the old city go. I went to Catholic school and the sexual abuse scandal happened and everyone had to turn their backs or turn down their eyes. All the Italians died. The old neighborhood disappeared.

I write about drug addicts, heartbreakers and the generally hopeless. In my work always the loss of something looms –– the Church, a shattering family, a house depreciating. What my work does is containerize episodes from my history and make some sad sense of them.

My strength is motivated, succinct dialogue. I am not a playwright who issues polemics through sock-puppets. I am interested in inhabiting another person. It’s my responsibility to make them live as deeply as I can. My characters have some old guilt they can’t get rid of, and their agony is in their trying to change.