Language is my love, but as I age I find I want the spare, hard, eloquence of the human voice. I am attracted to theatre that makes use of that most special of effects, the willingness of the audience to enter other perspectives, times and levels of reality. That for me is social realism: a communal experience of, in the words of John Lahr, wander[ing] around in somebody else's hell for a while. A later note: I've also discovered the pleasure of adapting to musical theatre, and especially the joy of writing lyrics--rhymed and romantic or boisterous, as in traditional American musical theatre.