From the forward to the play:  Is there another world? Another life? I ask this not so much in a scientific or spiritual context, but in a personal one. Is there another world -- parallel to our own -- in which life has dealt us the same hand but we chose to play our card differently? A world in which the "road not taken" was followed to its end? Rocket Man is my attempt to imagine such a world.

It's been said that the history of human thought is the history of regrets. We move through life with one eye on the present and one on the future -- and all the while our heart is making an inventory of missed chances along the way. Regrets are insidious and unrelenting. They are also, in their won way, rather comforting. For one, they require very little of us. They're usually static, frozen safely in the past ("Well, it's too late to do anything about that now."). Secondly, they're easy to maintain. We're not expected to cultivate our regrets like we are our "dreams." We can blissfully ignore them for years (at times "the unexamined life" is a Godsend) and then take them out on a rainy day and wallow in them with impunity. Thirdly, they play well in public since we are seldom the only one in the room nursing a regret (or two). They allow us, in fact, the freedom to construct a remarkable past, (If only I had done that when I had the chance, everything would be different."), which is infinitely easier than the tangible work of creating a future. Finally, and most crucially, our regrets almost never call our bluff. We are seldom given the "second chance" that we claim so desperately to want. Thank goodness for that. Imagine a world in which we were forced to go back and "get it right this time" -- and then had to live with the consequences (perhaps) of making an even worse choice than we did before. The past is a one-way street for good reason.

Which brings us to the present. The present alone is the home to action -- that tiny fleeting window between hope and regret. How then to spend it? What is to be done? In researching this play, I found these words by the remarkable landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted:

"Let us help each other then to give our thoughts a practical turn. There is great work wants doing in this generation, let us off-jacket and go about it."

The answer, like space, is both obvious and infinite:  We must combat our regrets (as best we can) with action. We must not rest on conviction, when conduct is required. And (with apologies to Disney) we must disenthrall ourselves with "wishing." Though the world can be surfed, the real world must be wrestled.

Rocket Man is the story of a man determined to transcend the boundaries of his life, determined to be granted that elusive "second chance." To do so he must examine what Camus called "this measureless universe where my adventure takes place." There is no telling what he will find there. For if our regrets are daunting, so too are the consequences of our actions. Knowingly or not, we affect the world with our every breath.