If you’ve known a true sociopath, it’s likely you’ll recognize the type among the three hyper-ambitious grad students in Aurin Squire’s wicked new comedy My Favorite Sociopath.

Making its world premiere at the venerable Contemporary American Theater Festival, in Shepherdstown, West Virginia — in a solid production directed by Céline Rosenthal — the play pits the three aspiring journalists against each other for a plum job at a newspaper. And the competition gets dirty.

The tactics used by one or more of them to steal an advantage might be described as amoral. Their behavior could certainly be seen as sociopathic.

Clearly, Squire, an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and journalist who also wrote the book for the Tony-nominated Broadway musical A Wonderful World, succeeded in channeling the two lying, cheating, unfeeling individuals who inspired much of the play.

One was someone he met at school while studying at Northwestern, the other he describes as someone he met in the New York art community years ago. “As well as other people,” he tells me, “where I’m like, ‘Oh, you’re just funny, or you just lie, but I don’t think you’re a sociopath. You’re just a liar or maybe you’re a narcissist.'”

Squire attributes his keener sense of these things at least partly to growing up in Miami. “Being around an area where there’s a very high concentration of con artists and a higher concentration of criminals, the senses and discernment just become more finely attuned,” he says.

So when he went away to college and met this shifty person, he recalls, “I was like, ‘Oh, okay, this is fascinating because my bells are going off right now, but I will reserve judgment.’ And then things progress, and I was like, ‘Oh, okay. My discernment was right.'”

Squire’s discernment, and blazing pen, took him from Northwestern, to an MFA in playwriting at The New School, then another at Juilliard, and eventually the newsrooms of the Chicago Tribune and the Miami Herald. He continued writing for publications like The New Republic and Talking Points Memo, while also writing plays and screenplays.

Enjoying success on the stage with works like A Wonderful World, a musical biography of Louis Armstrong, Squire has been making his mark in film and television, too, writing and producing on BrainDead, Evil, and The Good Fight, among others.

Now, he’s distilled that breadth of experience into a potent, and personal examination of truly cutthroat behavior among a trio of writers (and lovers), of whom any one might become your favorite sociopath.

METRO WEEKLY: As somebody who has opened plays all over the country, on Broadway, and in London, how did it happen that My Favorite Sociopath is opening at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown?

AURIN SQUIRE: Well, it was Emily Morris at New Dramatists. I was in my last year at New Dramatists, and graduated in the spring of 2025, and I wanted to squeeze in one more play. So I wrote this up in five, ten days. I was like, “All right, let me just do a workshop here and continue to rewrite it.” Emily is the one who recommended it to Peggy [McKowen] at CATF. Then we talked over the phone, and I was like, “I want to do this. I have a few concepts I want to try out. And then if this is a rolling premiere, I could try out different things as it rolls out.” So it’s been exciting.

MW: Do you have any intention to make changes as it’s running this month?

SQUIRE: I can’t because of the contract, because we only had two previews, and we only really had one preview to make changes. So that’s one change in front of an audience. So they made some of them, but then there are so many other changes by the second audience I just kept for myself.

MW: I have a question about the location, because I spent a little bit of time going around Shepherdstown and the area. I thought it was an interesting mix of a college town and also a place with a lot of Civil War and specifically Confederate history. How did you enjoy getting around there? Did you soak it all in? Did you have time?

SQUIRE: I didn’t really have a lot of time. I went to Martinsburg for Target the first day to grab as many things as possible. And then we went to Bath, which is now retitled The Springs where George Washington bathed — it was great to have that experience. But then most of my Shepherdstown experience has been on German Street, just walking up and down. I’ve been a guest artist for a week at Gettysburg College. So another Civil War site, more from the Union side, but a Civil War site. And I’m like, “All right, this is the vibe of both a college town, Gettysburg College, and also historians who are here and retired people.” And it’s a great mix for theater when you’re trying out something new because you get the more silent generation or the older generation, World War II, and then you get some of the younger generation, and then you have people like myself who are in the middle.

MW: That totally describes who I saw at this festival. Also, I saw you in the audience with your partner?

SQUIRE: Yes. He’s a playwright [Yilong Liu]. He graduated from Juilliard a few years after me. He had a play Off-Broadway called Good Enemy, directed by Chay Yew. He’s done a few movies, things for studios, and continues to work, and is going to upstate New York for New York Theater Workshop to work on a musical. And then going to China to work at Disney Shanghai on a new interactive theatrical piece. So we are talking all the time about the differences between Shanghai and Upstate New York and New York City and all the different variations.

MW: Do you bounce material off of each other, or do you keep it close to the vest?

SQUIRE: Yeah, we bounce material off of each other. One of the last plays he wrote at Juilliard has been developed at Playwright’s Realm, and it’s going up in Korea for 200 performances in December, and being translated. He is not Korean, he’s Chinese. But in that experience of a Chinese writer in the United States or New York City writing a piece for New York City audiences, and is now going to South Korea, and the translation process, not only verbally with the words, but the translation process culturally with the feel of it.

MW: In your play, I would say because of the writing of the character Evan, and the performance of Kennedy Kanagawa in the part, I absolutely recognized a person that I have encountered, whom I would describe as being a sociopath and who’s also, like Evan, gay. So was Evan the proverbial evil twink?

SQUIRE: Yes, but this was back in the ’90s. So there was a high amount of people at my school, because it’s in the Midwest, who were on a rampage against sex scandals and Bill Clinton, but a very large percentage of which I perceived of as being closeted gay men that were projecting their own self-hatred and disgust out onto a president, which is why I thought it was weird coming there, because I thought, “Well, we’re adults now. I’m 18, I’m in college,” and I’m encountering people who are like, “Isn’t it so disgusting?” And I’d be like, “What?” I’m so confused, I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone. “Isn’t it disgusting that the president had an affair?” I have news for you. If you’re disgusted by presidents having an affair, you’re going to be very disappointed in the American history of presidents.

And so, is it the intern? I was like, “I have news for you. Do you like JFK? You’re going to be very disappointed in learning about people in the White House having sex with the president, or people who are legal but may have been too innocent or too young.” I was like, “I have news for you. You’re going to be very disappointed in the world itself and almost every single industry if these are your barometers. And so I either believe you are totally naive, which is possible because we’re in school — you know it, and there is a self-hatred about your own fear of sexuality you’re projecting — and/or you’re a hypocrite and you’re using this to get ahead, and you’re actually fine with it.”

And I perceive the right-wing movement in the ’90s was a combination of those three things. The coalition was made up of highly naive people, both gay and straight, who don’t know how the world works; people who are closeted and self-hating and are somewhat aware; and the people who are fully self-hating, projecting and using it to their political advantage.

Because those same people, when another president comes along, are silent when that president’s on their side and doing things that are 500 times worse, that breaks all the commandments and breaks all the codes that they were outraged about earlier. They’re now fine with that, which shows they never really had a problem with it.

They were hypocrites using it for manipulation over the innocent, naive people who truly think the world does not operate like the “Epstein List,” like the people in the White House now, like people in the White House 20, 30 years ago, people in the White House a hundred years ago, like people in corporate America and the media. If you truly think the world doesn’t operate like that, then you are an easy mark to be conned by the hypocrites and criminals and monsters who are creating nightmare machines for people to live in and frightening them.

MW: I heard you after the play the other night talking about approaching sociopaths with the thought that, for some, it’s a latent trait, that it’s something that can be coaxed out or triggered. I mean, I got what you were saying, but do you want to tell me exactly what you were saying?

SQUIRE: Yeah, I have experienced, growing up, going to very good schools, being around very smart people, and then a certain trigger is said and this thing comes out of them. And you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t know you were like that.” Because usually, if I see a monster, I just stay away from them. If someone is, “I hate immigrants,” or, “I hate this particular group based totally upon an identity that someone has no control over,” then I go, “Oh, okay, then I’m going to stay away from you.”

It’s more interesting when you’re among people who seem normal and you bring up an issue. Maybe it’s race, they’re fine. You bring up an issue. Gender, they’re fine. Then you bring up another issue, and they explode. And this is the thing that the virus has concentrated itself in, and that trigger is now being pulled, and they explode on this issue.

And it could be anything. There are people who are gay and then the thing that they explode on is this other thing. There are people who are straight. They’re fine with gay people, the thing they explode on is this other thing. And I don’t want to define it because I think we all have our triggers. And part of being an artist is vaccinating ourselves against a vaccine, and being aware of those triggers. So growing up, I certainly had biases that would cause me to get very upset. Inexplicably upset. And then I had to analyze, why am I upset at that? Is there anything parallel that is like that? Well, why am I not as upset about that as opposed to this? And playing that game with myself and using the beauty of theater, which is empathy, on myself.

So when writing the other characters, I was like, “Well, what are the tendencies I have that I could dramatize that would put them on the level with Evan?” So then it becomes more dramatic and less me pointing at one person. So the process of writing it becomes healing because I’m looking at myself, as well as recounting something that happened and exploring my own biases.

But I think we all have triggers, and social media and the media is great at pulling those triggers so that people shut down. There’s this recent thing because the World Cup is going on now, and maybe because I’m in Shepherdstown and I’m in a red state, of all these Europeans posting videos about America and being surprised, being shocked. Because over in Europe, they’re taught America was school shootings, bad healthcare, and blah, blah, blah, and mean people, you’re going to get killed.

MW: We’ve taught them that too.

SQUIRE: Yeah, we’ve taught them that, but that is their algorithm, and that is the machine they live in. So when they came over here, they’re like, “Oh my God, this is — I never knew.” And I wonder what experiences I’ve had — and that’s the beauty of traveling, by the way, because you get to get out of that actual bubble and see for yourself — that are like that. During the quarantine, and after the quarantine, TV work was on Zoom, so I traveled around to different countries. And when I was in Europe, it was very interesting to meet people who had all these things about America, a lot of which I agree with, maybe because I’m living in New York City. I’m like, “Yeah, that’s true.”

But then people being like, “But I’m curious. I’m curious.”

There was a Somalian Uber driver when I was in Norway. When he found out I was an American, he was like, “Oh, I hate America. I would never go there, for the racism, for the this, for the that.” And I nodded like, “Nah, it does have that.” I didn’t fight him. And he was going through all of his list. And then at the end he’s like, “But I wouldn’t mind visiting New York City.” There’s a little window of, “Well, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I should travel, but not this place. I’ll go to just New York City.”

And then maybe if that person goes to New York City, they go, “Okay, maybe I’ll go to New Jersey. Okay, maybe I’ll go,” and slowly expand out from the biases we have, and undoing those triggers. So maybe if he comes back, when he meets another Somalian who’s living in Norway or another Norwegian and they go, “America, ugh, it’s blah, blah, blah.” He’d be like, “Truly, I was there, and these things happened to me and I was surprised.” So I’m always looking for those surprise moments to let me know like, “Oh, I had a bias, and then I actually meant reality and now I can undo that bias.”

MW: Do you want to say what were some of those biases of yours that you were undoing or working through in the play?

SQUIRE: Well, in my mind, I always have a dream of what I would do. And so a lot of Miles’ stuff is what I would do, I’m not going to actually do that, but here’s what I would do. Here’s what I’m actually capable of doing if I get down on your level. There’s a certain glee and satisfaction in a revenge drama, but at the end of the day, I know that’s not right and it’s not going to lead to a better world for myself or anyone else. So using that as a cathartic board to bounce these ideas off of lets me know, okay, so next time it won’t get to words, it’ll just get to thoughts in my head. And maybe next time it’ll only get to the first level of thought and I’ll be like, “Okay, stop. Let’s not play out this fantasy. Let’s stop this fantasy before it becomes elaborate, and then funny and then I want to tell a friend, or save it for an actual play or movie or something else.”

So I’ve been fascinated with the things we do, and part of what we do is seduction. In the notes I added during the rehearsal process, I explained this is a comedy of seduction. Every single scene is a temptation, a corruption, or a seduction. Every scene, people are trying to get something and using their words, using their strategy. And as writers and as reporters, we are seducing people all the time for stories. And when does it become that gray area? When does innocent seduction of trying to get a story done become slightly morally compromised, promising things to people you know you’re not going to deliver to get them to do the thing you need for me and then disappear?

And so examining my own tactics of seduction and what are the green light areas? The negative areas are pretty obvious. The no-go, the red areas there are pretty obvious. But what about the yellow areas, the in-between and examining the, “Okay, I said that. I didn’t really mean that.” Or when you’re flirting with someone on a date, the seduction process professionally, romantically, artistically, and negotiating that and how to keep things very clear so it doesn’t slip from the yellow into the red area.

MW: Well, in my opinion, because I think he does slip into the red area, Miles struck me as a true sociopath, and maybe that was also in the performance from Nick Saxton. But also incidentally, he’s the bisexual. That’s just a coincidence?

SQUIRE: I think people like that — and I’ve met people like that in college — it’s just a tool to get what they want. And it’s very weird because to the average person, we think of our identities as solid. Race, gender, and sexuality are solid identities. I am this, I will always be this. But for people who are a little bit more like, “I might be this, but I might also be that when this serves me to my advantage.” I might be Black, but I might pass as white in the 1920s in order to get into this club, or to become Carol Channing or to become whatever. Because society itself is more evil than the slipping I’m doing. And so the Black relatives of Carol Channing were like, “Yeah, do you, girl. Yes, do what you do because this society is messed up, so do what you have to do.”

Now, someone else might be like, “Why did you lie about your identity?” But she’s like, “I did it to get ahead so that I could take care of my family.” You could argue sexuality is the same thing as race. If someone is like, “What do I need to get ahead? I may be this, but there’s a part of me that may be also this. I just don’t exercise it, so I’ll exercise it in these dynamics that are advantageous to me.” And I’ve met many people like that who are gay, but can have sex with women if it’s advantageous, who are straight-ish to bisexual, and to me, that’s fascinating.

MW: It is fascinating. It was fascinating in this show. He has a line in the show that reminded me of a politician, a specific politician, Mike Johnson. The line that “Self-respect is overrated.”

SQUIRE: Yeah. [Laughs.]

MW: These characters are journalists, but were you thinking much about politicians with My Favorite Sociopath?

SQUIRE: Well, yeah, it was Clinton during the time, and then the time we’re living in now, and seeing Mike Pence, people who I believe somewhat are faithful to their religious dynamic and their code. And then you’re like, “You’re with that person? What the…?” Or JD Vance, Catholic, married to an Indian woman who’s like, “You’re over there? What’s going on?” Marco Rubio, Cuban American. And you see people who are flowing, and yeah, in our heads we go, “Okay, what’s the rationale behind this?”

And they’re like, “Well, I’m willing to sacrifice my self-respect for access. I’m willing to sacrifice my self-respect for the ladder-climbing. But once I get to the top of the ladder, I swear my self-respect will come back, or my integrity will come back.” And you’re like, “Will it, though? Will it really come back once you get to the top of the ladder or the top of the mountain, or will you just forget about that promise you made?”

I think a lot of them currently, as well as in the ’90s, they forget about the promise they made to themselves, and then they shove their self-respect in a corner and they ridicule it, as opposed to when they started off on the path and they put it to the side. “Yes, I’ll deal with my self-respect later. Not right now because I need to talk to the President, I need to talk to this person. And if I have any self-respect, if he says this thing, I’m going to respond, and then this meeting isn’t going to go well.”

MW: Yeah, as we are all “mourning” the death of Lindsey Graham, the death of self-respect is in discussion these days. I think, honestly, McConnell has more self-respect in the end. He’s as monstrous, in a different way.

SQUIRE: Yeah, my sister told me Lindsay Graham died yesterday morning and asked me what my thoughts were. And I was like, “Well, it would be tempting to say that Lindsey Graham made the world an uglier and more violent place. But I don’t know if that’s true.”

I don’t know, because that would mean that he was exceptional in some way, he was exceptional in promoting another layer of violence or war or greed. I think he was just a placeholder. He’s a seat warmer. He’s an empty suit. And the world is filled with empty suits who have no extraordinary ability, except for the ability to cancel out their self-respect, their individuality, and their decency for money and power. So Lindsey Graham’s replacement will continue his legacy and fill that empty suit. He’s the sort of living embodiment of moral vacuity and absence, and there’s nothing to mourn in that, any more than you’d mourn a vacuum in space, or be happy about it. You just observe it and go, “Okay. The vacuum always gets filled.”

MW: Which brings us to ethics, which is a big discussion in the show, and is also a big discussion I think in the world right now. We could talk about the ethics of the media’s complicity in covering up whether a senator is dead or alive. One could say that this play offers a cynical point of view on journalistic ethics. Do you think that journalistic ethics are a lost cause?

SQUIRE: I think journalistic ethics — when we allowed unequal media platforms to spread straight-up propaganda — began declining with Fox News, with the “We don’t need the other side, we’re just going to create a propaganda machine, and try to keep you in it.” That began to undo the ethics of journalism. Because then the center of gravity starts to bend towards the more fanatical side. Even if you’re in the middle, the middle starts moving. And now what is the middle would be considered right wing twenty years ago.

MW: Absolutely.

SQUIRE: And what is left wing would be considered moderate. Ronald Reagan would be considered a moderate corporate Democrat now. He would be at home with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. And you could argue, “Well, that’s a shame.” I was like, “Yeah, but Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are part of the same pull, of being pulled by this Death Star, by this exploding star that is now making a black hole and sucking us towards debasement and lies.”

We just came through a pandemic where a President’s lies and refusal to help other people, because it was initially blue states and he doesn’t understand how viruses work, led to the extra death of 400,000 or 500,000 people. And we just kept rolling along with our life. A president killed 400,000 or 500,000 U.S. citizens, mothers, fathers, grandparents, and he knew he was lying. He did it for political advantage, and there’s no accountability for that. There’s no pause to be like, “Wait, this person committed mass murder through lies.” And he knew it was a lie, because he got the vaccine the second he could. He wasn’t taking any of that junk he was suggesting to his followers.

Once you get at that level, it’s hard to come back from that unless you have a serious truth and reconciliation committee like in South Africa. It’s hard to come back from that unless you sit there and be like, “Wait a minute, you just helped kill 700,000 kids by canceling USAID, Elon Musk and right wing people.” Seven hundred thousand more people around the world who are dead and it costs us almost nothing. It costs us a penny to save 700,000 people, and all you got was a tax cut. You’re already rich. And then the denial, “No, that didn’t happen.” And people have been like, “Here’s an example. Here’s an example. Here’s actual anecdotal proof as well as statistical proof.” And then what do they do when you’re faced with that? They just deny it. They run away. “You’re a liar.” They call you names. And it’s like, I need you to sit with the fact of the evil you have done and the harm you have done, the genocide you have participated in.

And as the media, we need to have some truth and reconciliation committee. Otherwise, we’re just going to continue to bend to the right. And then the next president will kill a million Americans on a lie, or to get elected, or just because it’s Tuesday and he wants to push a button and make people feel a way. And the media will be like, “Oh, well, what can we do?” Because we’ve trained ourselves to allow people to do evil, and know they’re doing evil, and not speak out because we want to have access to the President in the White House. We want to have access to the Senator’s office, even though the Senator may be dead or brain-dead. We want to have access to all these things. And access comes at a price when what you’re accessing is a moral evil or a malice that has no bottom.

I wrote this article several years ago when I was graduating from Juilliard, about Leo Strauss and the disappearance of George Bush [The Case of the Disappearing Dubya], and how George Bush and the horror that he did, the second he got out of office, it was like an amnesia program like Men in Black. “Look into the light,” boom. And how Leo Strauss is the father of the right-wing movement. And Leo Strauss believes if you say something enough times, it becomes true. It does not matter what the truth is. Truth can be manipulated, facts can be manipulated if you have the right propaganda machine. And so Leo Strauss believed in rewriting history in all aspects, rewriting it to the advantage of right-wing people. It’s Machiavellian because history teaches us about how we learn in the present and from the future. And if you begin rewriting history, then people actually don’t know what history is.

If you shut down the African American Museum and all the exhibits about slavery, then Black people really just are complaining. To a white person who is not aware of history, “It wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t that bad.” If you shut down people’s history, then immigrants who come in — and I experienced this at Northwestern, a Polish immigrant who was like, “I don’t understand, Aurin, my parents just came in here and worked hard.” And I was like, “You look white.” I don’t know how else to say this because he had no concept, because he was under the Leo Strauss bubble. And this was a right-wing person whose Polish parents, right-wing, just work hard.

And another immigrant, right-wing, worked hard, from other countries. I lived in an international dorm. It was mostly immigrants, people from other countries. Another person, “Just work hard. That’s the truth. I don’t know why Black people are complaining.” And this was one of the least smart people I’ve ever met at school. And I was like, “That’s fascinating because you’re not smart at all, intellectually, which makes sense that this is your philosophy.” But in class we’d be like, “What was your grade?” They’d be like, “Okay, that’s weird. You got a B on that? Oh my God.” The intellectual abilities were not there, which is perfect for Leo Strauss and Fox News, to prey on people’s intellectual abilities that don’t match their ego, their ego’s confidence. And that Kruger-Dunning syndrome of overconfident, under-intelligent people is in full effect when you have people like Leo Strauss manipulating overconfident, undereducated people.

MW: We’re at the mercy of those people. The play also made good use of that line: “If you say something enough times, it becomes the truth.”

SQUIRE: Because there are people who truly believe that, who work as journalists.

MW: Our President believes that, apparently.

SQUIRE: The President believes that. There are people who truly, truly believe, “It doesn’t matter. We just cover this up and keep saying, ‘take this for COVID.’ By the way, I’m going to go get the vaccine, but I’m not going to tell anyone else. ‘Take this, and you’ll be fine.’ And it’ll be true. If not, we’ll just forget about it and move on.” And so 400,000 people are dead. So 700,000 children are dead last year. We just move on and forget about USAID.

MW: Where do you get your news?

SQUIRE: I read The Guardian and a lot of foreign newspapers, as well as a few newspapers here online. And my mom, when I’m back in Miami, watches [MS NOW], which I have conflicting feelings about. But those are my sources, and The New Yorker and some of the other traditional places.

MW: What about your old stomping grounds? What about The Miami Herald, The Chicago Tribune?

SQUIRE: Not as much anymore.

MW: No offense to those places.

SQUIRE: No. The newsroom I was in, Miami Herald, was a bureau on Miami Beach that got shut down.

MW: Oh, no.

SQUIRE: A lot of the bureaus got shut down, and the actual headquarters closed and was bulldozed. So now Miami Herald‘s in Doral, it’s in another area, which is in an earlier version that I might be adding some things into, to talk about the trajectory of journalism afterwards of the bulldozing of the Herald for a casino that was never built, about all these things that happened after Clinton and accelerated us to this point here that we’re at now.

MW: Well, do you ever pick up a newspaper?

SQUIRE: A hard newspaper? Very rarely. My mom has a Miami Herald. When I’m there, I’ll read it. Occasionally, the New York Times, but I’m mostly reading it online.

MW: I don’t like holding newspapers because of the newsprint, but I hope that they keep existing at least.

SQUIRE: I hope they do.

MW: So I could totally see My Favorite Sociopath as a film. Do you have any ambitions to see it adapted that way?

SQUIRE: I would love to see it adapted as a limited series or film. Let’s do it. Let me know the people. We can start pitching it tomorrow. I think it’s an important lesson. People need to laugh, and then you could slip the lesson underneath the laughter, and underneath the nostalgia and underneath the quirky characters, you can make people a little bit more aware. And then movies have a wider spray zone.

MW: Well, and the sexual tension too, I’m going to add, because at least live, this cast, they had that really going for them. It’s a big part of what we’re watching, seduction.

SQUIRE: You can get a lot more sex scenes in a movie.

MW: So I also read that you were writing a film about Reginald Dwayne Betts, who is from Maryland — ex-convict and a poet and advocate for prison education. What is the story and how is that going?

SQUIRE: Oh, it’s just about his life. And I think that’s on pause because I finished it right as Amazon transitioned their leadership to big-budget movies. It was about his life, Black people, Black family, and not dragons and swords and spaceships exploding. So I was told when I turned it in, “This is amazing. We have no notes because there is no interest. There’s no market anymore.” And I was like, “You don’t even want to give me some notes?” I wanted the rewrite fee. But I was like, “You don’t want to give me something?” They’re like, “No, it’s good. We were a pizza shop. You went away and made a pizza. You came back and we’re a steakhouse. There’s no notes. It’s just we don’t make pizza anymore.”

MW: Maybe the pizza chefs will come back.

SQUIRE: “Don’t you even want to try the pizza?” They’re like, “No, we’re a steakhouse.” I’m like, “Okay.”

MW: No more pizzas. Last couple of questions for you, Aurin. One, about your name. It’s cool, unusual, is there a story behind your name?

SQUIRE: My dad was really into chemistry, so my name is gold on the periodic table. A-U-R-I-C or A-U-R-I-K. And then my mom wouldn’t let him name me Aurik because she thought no one would be able to pronounce it. They put an N at the end of it, so gold or golden, and then really just Aurin, nickname. But yeah, that’s the story behind it. And then Squire’s Irish immigrants mixed with Barbados immigrants.

MW: Now, another thing that comes up in the play are Florida writers, Hiaasen and Hemingway. You are a Florida writer. What is it about Florida that might produce great writers?

SQUIRE: Edna Buchanan was a crime reporter for The Miami Herald, and I believe it was her, I might be misquoting, but I believe she said that Miami is a great place to learn as a young journalist and writer because there are so many awful, outlandish things happening at the same time all at once. So you just observe human behavior in its neon fluorescent form at its heightened level, in its level of shamelessness, obliviousness, freedom, whatever you want to call it.

The people who were the dreamers at the turn of the 20th century and pioneers and young went to California. The people who were a little bit older in their 40s and maybe a little bit more snake oil salesmen and couldn’t make it out to California, a lot of them came down and went south to Florida because it offered the same opportunities of open land. It just attracted a slightly different population, which then changed the vibe of the place, which is like, “We could do whatever we want here, we just don’t have any literal gold like they do in California, so we gotta invent it. We gotta make it up.”

And that’s why Florida is the future of the U.S. Whatever happens in Miami is going to happen in the United States 20 to 30 years later. You can track it. From the cocaine wars to mass shootings, cryptocurrency, all the things — whatever happens in Florida trickles out into the rest of the United States. So it’s also a Petri dish-slash-laboratory.

MW: They should put that on the billboards. Did you come out in Florida or in Chicago?

SQUIRE: Well, I came out in between. Freshman year in college I came out, while I was sort of transitioning. So yeah, Chicago mostly. But Florida, there are lots of gay people. It was just a different vibe back then in the ’90s.

MW: Meaning?

SQUIRE: There was a lot more right-wing, don’t have sex piety, which didn’t make any sense with the violence. It was very, very violent, but at the same time, this weird religiosity that has gone sideways in Florida, with Mar-a-Lago, with other things, which is sort of like, if you actually believe that now, you literally are a joke and a clown. If you actually believe that stuff, it makes no sense. And we all see the lie that it is, from the orgies that — I’m not even going to say their names — certain right-wing pundits and consultants of notoriety engage in, to the politicians. It’s changed in that way. I don’t know if that’s for the better or for the worse, or if it’s just gone sideways.

MW: Now, you made me think of somebody who did not come up, but maybe we’ve been talking about him the whole time. Do you have any thoughts on Andrew Gillum?

SQUIRE: No, that’s just sad. Don’t do meth. You’re too old to do meth at that age, man. I mean, don’t do meth in general, but if you’re going to do it, don’t do it when you’re like — no, it’s over with. It’s over with. Stop. And stop hanging around those party boys. Those Florida party boys are going to lead you down a road of perdition and it never ends well. Diddy was always messed up, but when he moved down to Florida and Miami and set up his base, it just accentuated it even more. People go down there, Amy Winehouse, Diddy, you go down to Florida, you don’t come back as the same person, or you literally don’t come back at all.

MW: Oh, wow. Choice words.

SQUIRE: The sunny place for shady people, as they say. I didn’t come up with that. That’s just a common phrase.

My Favorite Sociopath runs at the Contemporary American Theater Festival through August 2, at the Marinoff Theater, Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Tickets are $45 to $75, with discounts for students and seniors. For info about the festival and its other plays, visit catf.org.