...very old photographs often tickle awake my imagination. I especially love old photos of completely anonymous people in front of long-gone buildings or in unrecognizably changed locations.

These pictures, like this one above--NYC circa 1900--capture a single moment of a world that no longer exists. But in the fleeting second when the camera shutter snapped shut over a hundred years ago, this world very much existed--brimming and breathing with life! Hearts beating, feet walking, hands waving, mouths talking, whispering, shouting. The people in this old black and white picture were very much alive and going about their day. Working, shopping, playing, fighting, flirting, laughing, negotiating. Euphoric, enraged, elated, frustrated, jealous, amused, confused, content. Excited about tomorrow, saddened by yesterday. Ordinary people just living their lives. The same would be true if we took a picture of this same street full of people today.

But I find something so extraordinary in the timelessness of the ordinary. Each unknown person we see in the photo has their own individual story and this, for me, is profoundly inspiring.

Take a look at the young man in the center lower part of the picture--white shirt with suspenders, maybe 14 or 15 years old.

Who was he?

Did he come from another country or was he born on the fifth floor of the tenement on the corner? Did he belong to a happy family with lots of brothers and sisters or was he an orphan left alone to find a way to feed himself? Was he brilliant, average or challenged?

And what ultimately became of this young man? Perhaps he grew up, fell in love and married, became a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather and lived to be 104 years old. It's even possible that as a very old man he passed me as a very young boy on a New York City street. Perhaps he smiled at me as kind old men will do. Or maybe he was tragically struck and killed by a horse and carriage fifteen minutes after this picture was taken.

I can never know.

But the one thing I do know is that this human being lived a life. His own unique life. He loved who he loved and hated what he hated. He had bad days and better days and hopefully a lot of good days. But again, I can never know the specifics of this one life.

Yet my curiosity tugs at me enough that I feel compelled to make up his story.

Or the story of the woman with her hands in the fruit cart.
	Or the two men sitting on the back of the truckbed.

Or any one of the hundred or so people on this crowded street; they all lived a life and they all had a story.

I find this immensely intriguing.

So perhaps I'll make up a story with a few or many of them intersecting and intertwined; their hopes, ambitions and actions all affecting each other. Then again, I might snap my own picture in my mind and start making up stories from there.

For me, that's what playwriting is at its purest and simplest--making up stories about people impacting each others' lives.

When I started writing plays, I wasn't aware of any particular pull to tell stories that take place in the past. It certainly was not part of any mission statement. Yet three of my six full-length plays and several of my short plays are just that--stories that take place at a point in time before today.

But why? I'm bemused by this.

I'm not a history buff. I'm also not one who constantly yearns for yesterday, and I don't believe that everything was simpler and better 'way back when'. But when I jump inside these pictures and set to work making up who these people are and what they want and what they're going to do to get it, I am inevitably exhilarated by a recurring epiphany, each time as if for the first time. The human experience remains the same as it ever was...since the beginning of humanity.

We love, we hate. We laugh, we cry. We celebrate, we grieve. We make wars, we long for peace.

And as a playwright, somehow I've been inexplicably nudged to explore this human experience within the particularities and confines of different worlds and different points in time prior to the one I inhabit. Again, this is not my mission and I have no idea if I'll continue in the future to tell stories set in the past. Who knows? My next play might be a science fiction thriller with bickering robots set in the year 3057!

But I kind of doubt it.

Thank you for visiting my website. I hope you get to see some of the stories I've made up.