A. Those scenes weren’t played for laughs, and that is the thing I’m most adamant about in my work: that actors not tip their hand. It would be O.K. if an audience laughed all the way through, or no one laughed at all.

Q. You’re often described as a provocateur, a label you dislike. Do you aim to shock?

A. When I first started writing, I didn’t think there was anything shocking about my material. But I learned very quickly that there was. I view my work as being about reality — a hyper-reality, but reality. People were really outraged by my subject matter. But I was depicting things that really happen, more than people would like to believe.

Q. What are some of the real-world incidents that have inspired you?

A. “Purity” [about two professors who travel to Ecuador to have sex with a 9-year-old girl, an event depicted onstage] was partly inspired by a newspaper article I read about the North American Man-Boy Love Association. The incestuous relationship in “Burning” was partly inspired by a brother and sister who were suing the German government for the right to marry. These may not be everyday occurrences, but they are things that real people are doing. I think what disturbs people about my work is that I don’t demonize any of my characters. There’s something very interesting about humanizing characters we don’t want to identify with. People can have different ideas of what it means to be an ethical person. I want to explore that.

Q. You’ve spoken of the limits of psychological realism, and say you write plays “without subtext.” What’s wrong with subtext?