What is the main conflict in The Sound of a Voice by David Henry Hwang?

David Henry Hwang's The Sound of a Voice is a tragic story told through the mythic metaphors of Japanese literature. This play is Hwang's attempt to explore some of the deepest, and sometimes contradictory, human emotions. To do so, he created two very lonely middle-aged characters and placed them in an isolated house, almost as if to watch them interact as they simultaneously long for, and repel, the magnetic powers of love. Both his female and his male characters are desperately lonely, but their fear of being psychologically marred by the other keeps them from a final surrender to their emotional needs.