...Work in progress Readings: Ron Rifkin Judd Hirsch Jennifer Woodward Alan Benditt Ali Marsh Tod Randolph Tom Jones Jack Gilpin Agent: Buddy Thomas

I read an article in my local paper that prompted this play. Here in the hills of Connecticut, a man in his mid-sixties ran what he said was an escort service. The state said he was a pimp. During the trial he was a local media darling who used his platform to express his long held pacifist views by speaking out against the bombing of Iraq in 1998.

From that article I created a character, Jeremiah Rockwell, who emerges as a confounding iconoclast – a sexually liberated pacifist – activist – family man – romantic.

In the play, he chooses one reporter – a young woman - to whom he tells his story. Why he chooses her is a mystery she grapples with as she tries to get his story and as she fights for her journalistic distance. He hopes the jury will read her articles because in them are details that the judge will not allow the jury to hear. He charms, enrages and seduces her to get the advocate he needs. He is fighting for his freedom – and she fights for the truth. The truth she gets from him turns her life upside down.

The Sex King received a workshop production at Carnegie Mellon in July 2001. From that production I began a rewrite.

In the middle of working on the revision September 11th hit America and the world. Beyond trying to focus on anything other than the shattering consequences of that event, I was compelled to revisit Jeremiah's pacifism which, although does not occupy a lot of stage time, is a significant part of his character.

The national climate at that moment was clearly not hospitable to pacifist sentiments, and I thought then that Iraq specifically would have a place in some kind of military campaign. As Jeremiah says," In a time of war a pacifist is like a eunuch at an orgy." But Jeremiah, who, at thirteen, protested the bombing of Hiroshima was not afraid to take unpopular positions and so I thought his play should also not be afraid.

In addition the play takes place in 1998 and that is the reality that the characters in the play are dealing with. If in the minds of the audience it has any historical bearing on September 11th, all the better. Although pacifism is a potent force in his character the play is primarily about the relationship between two characters we come to know and who come to know each other in ways neither expected. And as the months have rolled on pacifism and Iraq both have quite a different hue.