Why a play? You studied theater history early on, so is this something you’ve always wanted to do?
I’ve wanted to do it since 1973.  And I remember the date, because that was the 500th anniversary year of Copernicus’s birth.  There was a cover story in Sky and Telescope, and that’s where I learned about the genius mathematician who visited him and convinced him to publish the book that he’d been reluctant to publish.  I remember thinking, what a conversation that must have been and what an interesting play it would make.  
     I fooled around with the idea for a few weeks, but I felt I didn’t know anything about playwriting, and I put it aside.  About six years ago, a couple of things happened to bring Copernicus back to the forefront of my thinking.  Owen Gingerich wrote his book, The Book Nobody Read [about the degree of attention that On the Revolutions received after its publication].  That got me very fired up about the idea again.  Also, my son was in college at the North Carolina School of the Arts, majoring in theater, so when I visited him, I was reminded of how fun and collaborative it was to do theater.  And I thought, I’m going to write this play no matter what.

Let’s set the stage for this drama.  So much of what people understood about the cosmos in Copernicus’s day came from the Ancient Greeks, astrology was mixed up with astronomy, and of course, there was a geocentric view of the universe.  What created the conditions for a change? 
One thought is that Ptolemy’s design offended Copernicus, because it