Special thanks to Ryan Hollyman, Philip Akin, Kevin Hanchard, and Carlos Gonzalez-Vio for your various turns as Al and Milt in workshop and production. Your generosity and feedback were instrumental in making this play what it is. My sincere thanks to Howard White and Eurithe Purdy for their blessings; Gypsy and TMJ for their encouragement; Joanna Yu, Michelle Ramsay, and Christopher Stanton for their gorgeous and influential production design (especially Joanna for her ad hoc construction and carpentry advice); Matt McGeachy for his perspicacity, insight, and willingness to follow me down any rabbit hole I wander into; and to Nina Lee Aquino for being the best partner-in-art a guy could ask for.
Sue Zhou has shared and enabled my obsession with poetry over the last decade. She enables me in most things, if I’m honest, but I feel like we’re the artists and people we are because we can always count on each other for blind, uncompromising support. Even when we’re wrong. Especially when we’re wrong.
Vienna Hehir had to hear me drone on about poetry, reading her snippets of poems and interviews, and put up with an ever-growing stack of poetry books in our cramped little apartment during two years of lockdown. I was able to fully appreciate the depth of the love Al had for Eurithe, the love of his life, only because I had the love of mine with me.