Leight was born on January 15, 1957, in New York City. When he was sixteen, he began attending Stanford University, where he studied journalism. In interviews, Leight has noted that Side Man touches on issues that were relevant to his own childhood. So much so, in fact, that the author notes that it was a difficult play for him to write. However, Leight is quick to note that many of the specific situations in the play were invented for dramatic purposes and that the play is not totally autobiographical.

In his early twenties, Leight ran into a woman whom he had a crush on in high school and decided on a whim to follow her to China, where she was going to teach English. At this point, in the early 1980s, Leight was exposed to much of the paranoia in the late Cold War era, and everything about...