By early 2006, the truth about American torture was no longer hidden. Actually, the President, George W.Bush, and his co-conspirators, had decided that the United States could spy on its citizens, hold suspects in secret cells, torture them, and, finally, testify before congressional investigations that ‘America does not use torture.’ Then, continue the practice of ‘Rendition’, and torture while repeating, with a kind of crazed echolalia, ‘...does not torture...does not – not-not…torture-torture-torture.’

People came to me saying, "The country is going fascist. You wrote the play about Nixon, ‘Secret Honour’, so you’re the one to write, now, about George Bush, before it’s too late."

Then I would explain the problem with propaganda, and why I could not write a truthful play about George Bush until he was out of office, (as I had about Nixon, after his fall). I was stricken, but to simply lampoon the moral idiocy of the man in the White House, while he was still in power, would not only not help anyone to escape the gathering storm, but such a political cartoon, would only serve to create a false consciousness of superiority in the elite who attend such theatre in order to mock their bogey man in effigy, instead of facing him in reality. I could not do it.

I lost sleep. I understood that to wait three years or more before speaking out-- with the truth of whatever art I might possess – was a scandal.

Bile and loathing and terror may create any number of cabaret sketches. Yet terror alone without pity does not lead to catharsis. And how in all sanity could I or any conscious American pity the smirking, cheerleading, sadistic, lethal, little, jumped up, dry drunk, war criminal, who was destroying our country? Terror, hate, nausea – yes. A truthful play, without the pity of the human condition to demystify the murderous clown --no.

"Don’t misunderstand," I told them. I explained that I did not denigrate political plays from the Theatres of Fact or Cruelty, of satire, parody, and cabaret. I, too, was glad to have written in these veins, when the stakes were lower.

But, now, that the torturer, Bush, was going to kill all of us, if he had to, nothing less than some cathartic, some revolutionary act was required. One had to try to match American torture and terror with the terror and pity of a work of art. And that attempt at a radical identification with the institutional monster, could not even be contemplated while he was still in power. My friends looked at me and shook their heads.

In the early morning hours the answer came, waking me up: you cannot write a work about George W Bush, in the full fontitude and humanity that is the tragi-farce of his life, until he is out of power and no longer the public symbol of our shame and awe. Suddenly I saw it all – if that is not possible, and since waiting years to take up the challenge would be equally impossible, why, then, the answer is obvious: set the play in the near future!

I did. In the certain knowledge that the locality for the play would be an elite psychiatric clinic hidden deep in the Florida Keys. I knew that the ex-president would have one secret service agent remaining, to cut his food, tie his shoelaces, and to lead him to his therapeutic appointments. And that there was bound to be a famous psychiatrist to the V.I.Ps of the Empire to search for his lost soul.

Knowing this, I could start to write; to tell the story of how whole nations can go mad. Not only Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia – but the United States of America. And that this was no laughing matter.

Of course, the man himself must be judged. But not by some future regime, because he failed; no, not judged by History. No, George Bush, all of us, will be judged by the oldest of all the arts: The Theatre.