You are a human animal. You are a very special breed, or you are the only animal, who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Good afternoon, this is Michael Silverblatt and welcome to Bookworm.

Today, I have a fairly unusual show for Bookworm because my guest is a playwright and an actor.

Every so often, I'm prevailed upon by a friend to go and see some theater. It's not that I don't like to do this.

It says that, you know, the amount of reading I do tends to keep me at home,

more than most people find themselves at home, and so going out seems to be a chore.

And when I do, you know, I'm entertained, but, you know, my primary Bellowick is literature.

But in this case, when I was invited to see Northern Lights by my guest, John Robert Hoffman,

I was so, I guess the word really is charmed by the play that I wanted to invite him to the show and let my audience know about

this play, Northern Lights. It was written by John Robert Hoffman, who plays all of the eight

or nine roles in it, and I thought I'd begin by asking you about its inception.

What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what began it?

I guess it has several inception.

The first being two summers that I spent in, uh, white river junction, Vermont

about seven years ago.

And, um, time that I spent there actually the first thing that, Vermont, about seven years ago. And time that I spent there, actually, the first thing that brought it up for me was a trip

that I took there that arrived on the M-TRAX, Montreal, at 5 in the morning to the train station,

and an experience that I had, which was quite unusual.

And being born in Brooklyn and being raised in Reynoldsburg, Ohio,

I decided when I started creating this work,

to take those two halves of my personality, my upbringing,

and sort of split the experience that I had at that train station

...