russian character by way of yokohama, for an african american character, for all these different characters? i know you worked with specific actors. did they help at all? what was the process there? . >> absolutely. in terms of the african american characters, i wrote this piece initially for the act core company and i thought it would be a great challenge to actually write a play for the core company and the core company has two african american characters and i had tailored two of the characters for steven anthony jones and gregry wallace. it's interesting that gregory wallace, an african american man, was supposed to play mr. oge, an excentric neisei who likes literature. i thought it would be an interesting thing to do. but after a while we did a reading and we realized as good