As a kid in Miami I had no exposure to theatre. The closest I got to theatre was watching the occasional film version of musicals, which I hated. I’m not one for musicals. At some point in my life I probably thought all plays were musicals because that’s all I saw. But you have to understand theatre is not part of the culture where I grew up. Culture is not even part of the culture. So as a kid I went to movies. What I think I loved about them was their irreversibility. It’s comforting to be able to pop in a VHS (or now DVD) and come home after school and watch Disney’s definitive interpretation of Aladdin. But that experience is completely absent from theatre, which changes night to night. And really what I love about it. How it can just fucking surprise you the way the 90th time you’ve watched Aladdin can’t.

OOB: Talk about your entry to this year’s festival. How did you come to write this play? Was there a particular inspiration behind its creation? What do you hope festival audience will take from your play?

MY: I guess I’ve always had a fear of death. I remember on a first date trying to explain it to the person in front of me and then have that person call my fear contrived. That person then never called me again. Sucks to be afraid of death and have no one to even share your fear with. So without even being aware of that, years later, I wrote this play. I hope anyone who sees it, is first entertained. Laugh. Please. If you don’t laugh then you don’t have to think about it until you die and then the moment your life flashes before your eyes I want you see my play.

OOB: What is the history of your festival entry? Do you plan to hone and further develop the play in upcoming rehearsals? Has it already been produced?

MY: The play was part of Theater Master’s Take Ten MFA Playwright workshop in Aspen and New York. It’s only fifteen pages or so but it went through an insane number of revisions with director Michael Goldfried, who pushed me to figure out what exactly I was writing about.

OOB: Tell us a little about your producer? How did you come to form your relationship together? If you are self-producing, please talk a little about that process—have you ever mounted your own work before?

MY: Adrienne Thompson is production manager in the Dept. of Dramatic Writing at NYU. She’ll be co-producing and also acting as my spiritual advisor as I pull this together.

OOB: Can you talk a little about your decision to enroll in the MFA program at NYU?  How has this program effected you writing?

MY: Attending NYU has been the best decision I’ve made in my personal life and career. Early on when I was deciding where to go someone there sat me down and said, “Fuck the other schools, fuck the agents… you’re going to leave here and you’re going to be a writer.” I signed on the dotted line moments after that talk and haven’t regretted it since. The program is more like a family than anything else. Home would be another way to describe it. And it is completely unique in the amount of writing required and the variety of writing.

Now has my approach to writing changed since coming here? Yes. How? I can’t quite say. I’ve changed as a person and writer in so many ways it’s impossible to articulate. You just know it when it happens. It’s like getting new eyes. When it comes to writing for screen, television, or the stage—I like writing for them equally for very different reasons. I love how gratifying thirty minutes of television can be and the challenge of telling a compelling and satisfying story while writing for something as arbitrary as paid advertising.

But that is an art all to itself. For theatre it boils down to my love of language, character, the immediacy of the stage, and collaboration. For screen, it’s just how goddamn hard it is to do. I think so many writers forget screenplays are not a goddamn artist’s statement, but a blue print.

In my experience you kill far more darlings in screenplays than anything else.

OOB:  Looking back over your personal history in the theatre, what emerges as your favorite memory? Is there a particular story you’d like to share?

MY: Besides seeing a performance of “Charlotte’s Web” at a children’s theater in Miami when I was a kid and being passionately in love with the actress who did double duty as Fern and Charlotte, my relationship with theatre began the day I moved to New York City about eight months ago. Since then I’ve seen a ton of plays but the most amazing thing so far was a one act by Tennessee Williams called “Green Eyes” that was part of a series of Williams plays done by Target Margin at the Bushwick Starr—it played one night, the space held about seventy people. I paid twelve bucks to sit on the stairs and the first thing the lead actress did was walkout on stage and strip nude. The next twenty minutes were the most influential theatre I have seen to date.