Over the last few years, in preparation for a new play, I interviewed doctors, patients and healers about the human body, its resilience and its vulnerability. Although our conversations were not primarily about the health care debate, they do reveal many of the feelings and thoughts of the people in the audience President Obama will address tonight.
The unruliness that now animates the conversation stems from our passions, hopes and discomforts — about life, death, who should (or should not) take care of us and whom we should take care of. The president's audience has a million and one perspectives, some of them clumping together like blood platelets under one political roof or another. The following excerpts (not all of which are in my play) reflect the range of views.
