What drew you to work on this project?

First, it’s just a great play, so well written. And it’s such an intimate piece. Rarely do you get a chance to dig in with just two actors on such concentrated work. Also, I’ve lived in northeast Ohio for the past 17 years, so I was very excited when I saw that it was set in Cleveland.

Do you have a strong connection with basketball or with LeBron James in particular?

Definitely, I grew up playing basketball with my brothers. That was what you did, you know? You played basketball and you watched basketball. I remember at the time when LeBron came into the league as an 18-year-old phenom, I still felt like a young phenom at the time, too, in my own field. I think that’s what LeBron James was: an invitation for us all to see ourselves as phenomenal—as young people, young artists, young scholars, young business people, trying to break in and find their place in the world. I remember everybody using the term: I’m gonna be the LeBron James of the theatre world, or whatever world. He was a representation of our greatest aspirations in a lot of ways.

Are there other sports heroes who have been meaningful to you in your life?

My son is named after Muhammad Ali. He’s been a very influential figure to me in terms of understanding the role of sports and entertainment and merging those with politics and social justice. I think that sports are a game for a reason, and there’s something that needs to be playful about it, but it also has a serious and intense impact on our culture. I think sports at their best have a responsibility to society and to culture, to help inspire us to be better human beings, and then inspire us to challenge the possibilities, challenge access for communities. And Muhammad Ali, to me, is someone who really modeled that idea.

How do you think Rajiv Joseph is using basketball in the play?

For one, I think he uses it as a tool for these two men to engage in a relationship and to express their emotions, their feelings, and their aspirations. Some people don’t know how to articulate their hearts, but they can articulate their passion for their team, for their heroes. They can engage in complex analysis in sports that is often hard to apply to their own lives. You can analyze your team’s strengths and weaknesses, what your team needs to do in order to win the championship, and in a way it becomes a metaphor for our own ambitions. It even gives you a chance to measure your worth. When you have a championship team, you have a championship city. And unfortunately the inverse is true. When you have a losing team that just can’t win, that mentality can rub off on the people too.

But that feeling of being a winner or a loser is so far outside any one fan’s control!

And that’s what this play is about. Because Cleveland is really trying to overcome a legacy of losing. Cleveland as a city has lost so much that they almost don’t know how to win. That’s what I think. This play explores these two young men who have each experienced loss so much in their lives. So much that they almost don’t know how to recognize or deal with their own wins, because they’re used to always coming up short. But with sports, like with life, within every loss, there’s the potential for recovery and a potential to win in the next game, or a championship next season. Both of the characters in the play at times get things they really wanted, and then they also have to deal with the emptiness of that and realize there are still deeper holes in their lives that they’re looking to fill. And that’s where their friendship comes in.

What are some of the other big ideas that the play deals with that intrigue you?

I feel like the heart of the play is about two young men who are both wrestling with loneliness. They have voids in their lives, in their families, and in their relationships. And it explores the importance of friendship, of having a good friend throughout life. One of my favorite lines is: “I think when you get older you realize how much you didn’t realize how much certain people mean to you.”

How did being in the round impact your ideas about the production?

Being in the round is a challenge because the play is set in basically two places, a wine bar and an antique shop, each of which wants to have a healthy amount of realism to them. But being in the round also gives me an opening through the basketball. You know how we’ll all pick up a piece of paper off the floor and we shoot it for the trash can, and some of us turn it into a very intricate, extravagant game—we take it very seriously in that moment, and then we let it go. That happens in the opening moment of the play, and it had me thinking about the importance of the theatre as round, like a sports arena. So with the design, we talked about how we might take advantage of our own little arena here.

What are you hoping an audience will take away from the play?

I hope they’ll go away appreciating their own relationships more, maybe thinking about an old friend and perhaps reach out to somebody they may have gone their separate ways from. The play is talking about and looking at the depth of what a good friend can mean to us, and also how our differences can be translated into friendship while still remaining different. Actually, sometimes being different is the basis for a great friendship.