"I've never seen an English-language production of Mary Stuart, although Schiller's play has been done in English innumerable times. The first German production that I saw was performed, oddly, in a kind of pseudo-Mexican street theatre style, with touches of commedia and Balinese theatre thrown in, and a single male actor portraying both queens. It was a peculiar introduction to Schiller's play.

Nevertheless, I still remember the image of one actor playing both queens which effectively, if perhaps too obviously, highlighted their innate connection. To express their difference, the actor carried a small leather purse, on one side of which a burning heart was embroidered in rubies (Mary) and on the other side a crown in gold (Elizabeth). The conflict between the heart and head did not only exist between two people, but within the individual. It was this conflict that struck my initial interest in Schiller's play.

When I finally read the play in English, though Schiller's exquisitely structured plot got my heart racing, the fidelity with which the various English and Scottish translations whose versions I read maintained the original's Romantic-era excesses seemed to slow down what impressed me as a remarkably contemporary dramatic situation, a fast-moving, juicy political thriller that could easily take place right now in the UK, Germany, or America. So I decided to take a crack at adapting the play myself. Though I ended up cutting quite a lot, I found that indeed nothing needed to be added to make the play relevant to today. It already was.

Like Shakespeare, Schiller was not at all concerned with either historical idealism or accuracy, but rather used his source material as the spark to fan a blazing drama. In this regard, the German playwright's dramatic take on the historical British Queen Elizabeth is a particularly refreshing example. Gone is the BBC reverence for the great icon. In Schiller's hand she is a deeply complicated human being.

I love the messy psychology Schiller granted all his characters, how they contradict themselves and do battle with their moral conundrums. I'm also fascinated by the collision of times, places, and cultures to be found in a contemporary American production of a 200-year-old German play based on 400-year-old British history. Schiller captured something internationally and eternally human when, through Mary Stuart, he posed an important question that it seems every generation of every culture must answer: What do we do when our system of justice, our sense of morality, and our own personal desires don't meet eye to eye?"