Who wants to see the same play again? I certainly don't want to write the same play again and again.
— Lynn Nottage
I'm a contemporary playwright in a postmodern world.
I don't think any of us could predict Trump. Trump is the stuff of nightmares. But in talking to people, I knew there was a tremendous level of disaffection and anger and sorrow. I know people felt misrepresented and voiceless.
Like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, I try to balance reality with how we'd like the world to be.
The stage is the last bastion of segregation.
I do see myself as an old-fashioned storyteller. But there's always a touch of the political in my plays.
The presence of a bed changes the way people interact.
It's incumbent on us to reach beyond the confines of the institutions that traditionally produce art and find new ways to get it to the people.
I like to go into a space, listen, absorb, and then interpret.
I teach at Columbia, and I'm always looking for books I can lose myself in during the 45 minutes I'm on the train.
If the Tony Awards want to remain relevant in the American theater conversation, then they need to embrace the true diversity of voices that populate the American theater.
Growing up in New York City, I'd flirted with the idea of driving, but between the subway and the sidewalks, I'd never needed to learn.
There's never any ebb in human misery.
I love Twitter.
I am interested in people living in the margins of society, and I do have a mission to tell the stories of women of colour in particular. I feel we've been present throughout history, but our voices have been neglected.
I was repeatedly told that there isn't an African American woman who can open a show on Broadway. I said, 'Well, how do we know? How do we know if we don't do it?' I said, 'I think you're wrong.'
I find my characters and stories in many varied places; sometimes they pop out of newspaper articles, obscure historical texts, lively dinner party conversations and some even crawl out of the dusty remote recesses of my imagination.
'Intimate Apparel' is a lyrical meditation on one woman's loneliness and desire. 'Fabulation' is a very fast-paced play of the MTV generation.
There were not a lot of women in the theater department - it was really run by men, and so the message was that women can be onstage, but women can't really be backstage.
Winning the second Pulitzer firmly places me in conversation with this culture.
It's very important for me to have dialogues across racial lines.
For me, the first thing is to tell a good story.
For me, playwriting is sharing my experiences, telling my stories.
We use metaphors to express our own truths.
I think folks who are resistant to engaging in art become less so once they encounter art that really reflects them.
Women are standing up and leaning forward and asserting their power.
A lot of the factories that had been the bedrock of many small cities were being shut down, which led me to investigate what I'm calling the 'de-industrial revolution.'
Broadway is a closed ecosystem.
By the time I reached 50, I'd accumulated many unresolved fears and desires.
In many ways, I consider those to be my formative years, because when you're in school, you have a distant relationship to the world in that most of what you're learning is from books and lectures. But at Amnesty, I came face to face with realities in a very direct and harsh way.
I can't quite remember the exact moment when I became obsessed with writing a play about the seemingly endless war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but I knew that I wanted to somehow tell the stories of the Congolese women caught in the cross-fire.
In the business of war, the role of women is really to maintain normalcy and ensure that there is cultural continuity.
I've been asked a lot why didn't 'Ruined' go to Broadway. It was the most successful play that Manhattan Theatre Club has ever had in that particular space, and yet we couldn't find a home on Broadway.
Each play I write has its own unique origin story.
In my family history, there are generations of women who were abandoned by men. It's one of the themes of my family.
The people sometimes who are closest to us are the ones who bear the brunt of our frustration.
Ultimately, we're incredibly resilient creatures. People really do get on with the business of living.
The theatre should reflect America as it's lived in today. And that is a multicultural America.
My parents are avid consumers of art, collectors of African American paintings, and have always gone to the theater. My mother has always been an activist, too. As long as I can remember, we were marching in lines.
When I sat in rooms with middle-aged white men, I heard them speaking like young black men in America. They had been solidly middle class for the majority of their working careers, but now they were feeling angry, disaffected, and in some cases, they actually had tears in their eyes.
It remains an incredible struggle for women in theater, and, in particular, playwrights and directors, to get their work seen and to not only get seen, but to get it to Broadway.
When you're fighting for an increasingly smaller portion of the pie, you turn against each other; you create reasons to hate each other.
I would like there to be gender equity. I would like the Broadway season to reflect sort of the demographic of the country.
I was really interested in the way in which poverty and economic stagnation were transforming and corrupting the American narrative.
I am a Tony voter; it is an honor that I take seriously. Each season, I enter the process with a degree of enthusiasm and optimism, which dissipates as I slowly plow through show after show.
My hobby is raising my children.
I knew that there was a great deal of depth and life that was sitting just beyond my mother's gaze.
Plays are getting smaller and smaller, not because playwrights minds are shrinking but because of the economics.
African American women in particular have incredible buying power. Statistically, we go to the movies more than anyone. We have made Tyler Perry's career. His films open with $25 million almost consistently.
If you lead with the anger, it will turn off the audience. And what I want is the audience to engage with the material and to listen and then to ask questions. I think that 'Ruined' was very successful at doing that.
