While at the Old Globe during the Play Discovery Festival of October 1986, an audience member at a post-reading discussion of The Boiler Room asked, "Why do you write?" At first I thought the person hated the play and what she actually wanted to say was, "Why don't you drive a truck instead?"

Fortunately the lady did like the play, but I do feel that the question, if for no other reason than my own reinforcement, does deserve addressing.

The question for me should not be, "Why do I write," but rather, why do I write for the theater. When I write a letter to my mother, for example, it is just that—a letter to my mother to get her off my back for two months (if I'm lucky); when one writes for television, it is usually for money; in films, it's the ability to randomly jump scenes from one location to another and still give the impression that one knows what one is doing.

In theater, where the use of more than one set is a sure sign of wanting to remain unproduced and where money is practically nonexistent for everyone, including the playwright (or maybe I should say, especially for the playwright), one writes for the dreams. (God, is that vague.) OK, I'll try again—for the magic. (No, that's no good either.) Alright, so by now you realize that I have no idea. Really, I don't. All I know is that while in college at Fordham University in New York City, I read Isben, Shaw, Miller and Williams and decided that I too had a couple of stories worth telling, and that theater, with all its magic and ability to probe and sometimes even momentarily fulfill our dreams, was the medium I would choose.

I think I've been a writer ever since I can remember, although, in practical terms, I didn't begin to write until the age of 27. But I do recall that even at a very early age, I saw everything as an observer. Even when hanging out on the streets, I felt a part of things but at the same time I also sensed this other part of me standing back and observing my friends.

Growing up in the ghetto is unquestionably tough business. There's poverty and crime, the drugs, the intense hassles at home for lack of this or lack of that. But even in the most depressed areas, one can always find hopes and dreams. And as I began to write, I discovered that this is what I was interested in writing about—the hopes and dreams that somehow survive within the most trying conditions.

The Boiler Room is a play about hopes and dreams. The types of dreams that must occur in order for others to happen. This production of The Boiler Room is for me a dream. I never would have guessed that my first play, a play about my family, which I also wrote so I could try to understand what the heck my crazy childhood was all about, would be produced at such a prestigious place as the Old Globe.

And I suppose that's what this world of theater is all about: The magic, and of course, the dreams that sometimes come true.