Nauffts, who considers himself agnostic, reasons that he has always been fascinated by the subject of religion in part because he was raised with no religious constraints in the “WASP-y, white Republican town” of Hudson, Ohio. “Without the sense of peace that religion can provide, I’ve floundered in times of despair because I felt I had nothing to cling to,” he laments while describing the moment he misdiagnosed a bad case of mono in the early 1980s while attending New York University. “All my symptoms mimicked the symptoms of AIDS. I was just 18, a scared kid, and all I knew is that gay men were starting to die because of having sex. I had loving parents but felt a huge amount of shame, so I was convinced it was my punishment for being gay. Even without religion, I still feel some self-loathing as a gay man. You can’t just wipe away years of being told you’re not equal and not normal.”

At the end of his long, exhausting day, Nauffts feels a communion of sorts with both of Next Fall’s soul-crossed lovers. “I was thinking on the plane this morning about how I’ve always been a glass-half-empty kind of guy,” he says, clinging to a half-full Starbucks cup, “but beneath the surface I do have an inherent belief in the goodness of people. That’s what I’ve tried to depict with this play. Ultimately, whether they’re believers or nonbelievers, all people are just grasping for grace.”