But if the world that Ms. Reza describes is filled with snarled ambiguities, her plays are as orderly as an obsessive-compulsive's sock drawer.
The comedian Gilda Radner, who died of ovarian cancer in 1989, at age 42, wrote of her acceptance of ambiguity in her book "It's Always Something": "Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end.
In the early scenes, when Ms. Fleming's Thaïs, wearing curly golden locks, is flirtatious and tempestuous, the poignant colorings of her voice tinge her singing with sadness, lending ambiguity to her defiance.
Perhaps her nomination, and the ambiguity about her sexual orientation, gives us the opportunity to finally break from the chains of the Victorian world.
Ms. Fleming brought an unerring sense of bel canto style, ravishingly pianissimo singing in her radiant high range, and psychological ambiguity to her portrayal of this demonic duchess whose murderous scheming eventually, though unwittingly, claims her own son.
Retired, unemployed, the social safety net of her country no longer available to soften her fall after reunification, Heidi began to experience a deepening sense of dislocation, despair and ambiguity about her sexual identity.
The ambiguity about her immigrant grandfather does not help.
Joana's ambiguity about her race is quintessentially Brazilian.
Claude Cahun explored gender ambiguity through her own genre of photographic self-portraiture.
