One of my core values as a playwright is intellectual intimacy: the experience of getting so close to our ideas that they arouse and disgust us. The otherworldliness of theater allows for this. I am deeply motivated by this emotional engagement with ideas; I think it forces us into intimacy with our deepest selves. Like a flint making flame, I believe that our ideas and beliefs can be an explosive stimulant to our emotions. Yet in everyday life, we don’t allow ourselves to push on our ideas in this way. Without this process, we cannot understand ourselves fully. Another of my core values as a writer is questioning ideology. Ideology is seriously seductive to people and creates a false sense of safety. I believe that we all need time and space to draw out our own ideologies from their hiding places and gently - if firmly - examine them. Theater can be that space and time for us.