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...five questions Derek Ahonen has never been asked. And a bonus question.

1) What’s the most perceptive question about your work anyone has ever asked you?
Perceptive question? I don’t know if anyone has ever asked me a perceptive question. Maybe the most relevant question anyone has ever asked me about writing is if I felt comfortable gutting my personal truths and the truths of those close to me in the name of comedy. The answer of course is yes.

2) What’s the most idiotic question about your work anyone has ever asked you?
“When do you plan on throwing in the towel on this whole starving artist thing?” I’ll quit when I get some dough or hang myself. Whichever comes first.

3) What’s the weirdest question about your work anyone has ever asked you?
I don’t remember. Nobody asks me anything nearly as weird as the shit I ask myself. I find myself wondering stuff like, “Does this sequence of words give me the feeling of 1983 PBS blue?” “Can I trade an actor in my theater company to another theater company for draft picks?” “Is it possible to ever write anything I enjoy as much as the musical numbers from The Muppets Take Manhattan?” Maybe none of that is even that weird. Oh well.

The Amoralists are a theatre company that describes themselves as producing work of no moral judgment, collaborating exclusively with American playwrights whose works are not concerned with the principals of right or wrong, good or bad, but rather full or empty. Their current work, Amerissiah, a title the merges America with messiah, follows Barry Ricewater, a terminally ill man with a God complex. He returns to his childhood home to confront the demons of his past and the family of his present. The play's parents include director/playwright Derek Ahonen, producer Matt Pilieci and actor/fellow Amoralist co-founder James Kautz.