A bunch of us here in Texas have for the last six years been wildly embarrassed about our state’s exports: George. Enron. Anna Nicole. There are just some things that shouldn’t be let out of the yard.

FronteraFest is the largest fringe festival in the southwest and, I betcha, the most populist. It is an unjuried, first-come-first-served, four-week grassroots bacchanalia of performance in Austin, Texas.

If you discover an awful secret, should you tell? Should we base our ethical decisions on principles, or only on consequences? Must we really take the interests of others into consideration? Are there intrinsically right and wrong acts?

Outside the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, I have exactly one hour to talk to the Obie-award winning combo of Lisa D’Amour and director Katie Pearl (who were recognized this spring, along with fellow collaborator Kathy Randels, for Nita & Zita). We’ve known each other for a while and share common theater roots in Austin, Texas; they’ve worked together extensively. We are all working on projects at PlayLabs: theirs is Lisa’s new play, Cataract; mine is as dramaturg for Laurie Carlos.