[In the following interview, Rabe discusses his dramatic adaptation of A Question of Mercy.]

[Coen]: What led you to dramatize the essay by Richard Selzer?

[Rabe]: The piece was originally published in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, and when I read it, I was stunned by it as it unfolded. I had been in talks with American Playhouse about doing an adaptation of something else, so they were on my mind—I first approached them about doing it on television, and they said yes and optioned it.

I doubt that I'd have thought of making it into a play [A Question of Mercy] off the top of my head, but once I got into it I started to feel it as a play. When I turned it in to American Playhouse I said, “If you don't do this, I want to make a play out of it.” Then they lost their funding and gave me all their rights to it, and I just had to get the theatrical rights from Dr. Selzer, which happened very quickly.

What made you think of it as a play?

The richness and the contrast of the language—the reasonableness of the language against the insanity of the dilemma felt very theatrical to me. When I first read it, I was overwhelmed by the nature of the event and, of course, Anthony's reversal in the hospital after the suicide attempt—this shocking and moving and intolerable thing. I wasn't as aware of what I think is the key issue in the play—the human folly of it.

You follow the essay very closely, but one of the key differences is that Dr. Chapman—your fictional version of Dr. Selzer—says at the end that he wishes he had let his phone go unanswered, which the real Dr. Selzer never writes. Is that related to your sense of the human folly?

The key moment for me is when Dr. Chapman asks, “What had we failed to take into account? It was simply ourselves, and from ourselves had come betrayal.” You first see Thomas [Anthony's lover] bring the doctor in to assist in Anthony's suicide, and you end up with Susanah taking over and telling them they can't do it. Then you say, “Well, who is she, how did she even get in here, and how the hell did that happen?” That's really where this whole other level of what I call the folly of it came into play.

Thomas and Anthony are very close, they share an incredible bond; then they bring the doctor in. Thomas's flaw is his fear of the police and desire not to participate, and slowly—because the doctor is willing to participate—slowly a triangle develops, and Thomas, because he feels excluded, brings Susanah in so he has an ally. The play takes them painstakingly through the development of the plan, this very reasonable approach to an unreasonable moment, and then they abandon the whole thing.

To me, that's the folly of it. All the alliances are reversed, and ultimately Anthony, having summoned these people, is all alone. If you trace this plot line through, it is in some ways even more amazing than Anthony's own reversal. I don't think the characters understood this about themselves. They each thought they were doing the right thing at each moment, except finally the doctor says, this is so complicated that I wish I hadn't answered the phone.

That's what I find so moving about the play—it's about the impact of Anthony's decision on the survivors, and also their complicity in that decision.

What thrilled me about writing it was working on those issues. The issue of assisted suicide is not really resolvable; it's about getting society's approval. People kill themselves all the time, if they're willing to step outside society. But when you want the approval of civilization. … That's what the scene is about when the doctor asks why he doesn't just do it. Somehow, Anthony wants it to be right, he wants it to be civilized.

I've heard the play characterized as an “AIDS play.” Do you agree with that?

You can understand why someone might say that, but it's misleading. AIDS is only part of the environment of the play. I thought at one early point about whether I should change the nature of the disease to avoid that characterization. But then I thought, that's silly, why do that? I tried to adhere to and find justification in the essay for almost everything that's in the play. Sometimes it's only a sentence or two, but it's there.

On the surface, the play seems very different from what we think of as a David Rabe play, but it's really not, is it?

I think that's true. The environment is certainly not like either what I've been working on recently or the early plays and, technically, it's more measured. But I do think that deep down, a lot of my work is about people trying to make reasonable accommodations of situations that are insane or absurd. It is a little outside the norm for me in that I didn't generate it fully; I responded to another piece, and it doesn't feel quite personal.

On the other hand, it certainly feels like it's kindred to the other work. I kept realizing more and more what it was ultimately about as I worked on it. At first I thought the events had power in themselves, that I would just present them. I really wasn't aware of the things that finally became central issues to me—the shifting alliances, the way people hardly even know they've shifted. That part of it is very familiar to me in terms of my other plays.

Have you met Dr. Selzer, or any of the other people the characters are based on?

In the beginning I only spoke to Dr. Selzer on the phone—and we didn't discuss the events at all—although I've met him since. I haven't met any of the others. I wanted to work off the essay as it existed, and my response to it. I didn't want anyone to be able to veto it.