Broken Things was conceived in a conversation over lunch with Edward Albee, my teacher at University of Houston. He had told me that I was a playwright, information for which I was very grateful, and I told him about my teenage son who is autistic. I said that I would like to write a play about an autistic man but I didn’t know how to do it without being maudlin. He replied, “That’s easy. Do it from your son’s point of view.”