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" 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.' "
Lynn Nottage
Small
Revolution
Me
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" The essence of creativity is to look beyond where you can actually see. I don't want to dwell in same place too long. "
Lynn Nottage
Long
You
Want
" All of my plays are about people who have been marginalized... erased from the public record. "
Lynn Nottage
People
Public
Who
" It's very easy, when we're reading those articles on the 20th page of 'The New York Times,' to distance ourselves and say, 'It's someone else.' "
Lynn Nottage
New York
Reading
Distance
" Once working people discover that, collectively, we have more power than we do as individual silos, then we become an incredibly powerful force. But I think that there are powers that be that are invested in us remaining divided along racial lines, along economic lines. "
Lynn Nottage
Powerful
Think
People
" By the sheer act of writing, we are trying to place value on the stories that we're invested in. "
Lynn Nottage
Writing
Stories
Value
" The people sometimes who are closest to us are the ones who bear the brunt of our frustration. "
Lynn Nottage
Bear
Us
Sometimes
" My fears about where theater is going - it's the Hollywood model, where people are chasing the almighty dollar and making commercial decisions based on nothing more than generating income for themselves and their theaters. "
Lynn Nottage
Nothing
Decisions
People
" I remain committed to telling the stories of women of the African diaspora, particularly those stories that don't often find their way into the mainstream media. "
Lynn Nottage
Stories
Women
Those
" For me, playwriting is sharing my experiences, telling my stories. "
Lynn Nottage
Experiences
Sharing
Me
" When you begin a play, you're going to have to spend a lot of time with those characters, so those characters are going to have to be rich enough that you want to take a very long journey with them. That's how I begin thinking about what I want to write about and who I want to write about. "
Lynn Nottage
You
Thinking
Rich
" American audiences very rarely deal with material outside their borders. "
Lynn Nottage
Deal
American
Borders
" People probably have different philosophies about this, but I think that when you're first shaping the play and trying to find a character, the initial actors that develop it end up imprinting on it - you hear their voices; you hear their rhythms. You can't help but to begin to write toward them during the rehearsal process. "
Lynn Nottage
End
Think
You
" The stage is the last bastion of segregation. "
Lynn Nottage
Segregation
Last
Stage
" In listening to the narratives of the Congolese, I came to terms with the extent to which their bodies had become battlefields. "
Lynn Nottage
Had
Listening
Which
" Here's the dilemma of the modern age: There used to be actions that workers could take, in the form of a strike. But now, that's being pre-empted by lockouts. They don't even have that leverage to protect their jobs. "
Lynn Nottage
Now
Protect
Used
" 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. "
Lynn Nottage
School
World
Relationship
" I think that human beings were incredibly resilient; otherwise, we wouldn't keep going. "
Lynn Nottage
Going
Human
Keep
" The great thing about 'Vera Stark' is that my research was watching movies, screwball comedies, so I could literally sit back and relax. "
Lynn Nottage
Relax
Movies
Great
" Women are standing up and leaning forward and asserting their power. "
Lynn Nottage
Power
Standing
Up
" 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. "
Lynn Nottage
Myself
Train
I Can
" I'm interested in people who are dwelling outside the mainstream. And very often, those people happen to be woman of color. "
Lynn Nottage
Outside
Happen
Woman
" By the time I reached 50, I'd accumulated many unresolved fears and desires. "
Lynn Nottage
Many
Time
Unresolved
" 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. "
Lynn Nottage
Questions
Anger
Doing
" We use metaphors to express our own truths. "
Lynn Nottage
Own
Express
Metaphors
" I do see myself as an old-fashioned storyteller. But there's always a touch of the political in my plays. "
Lynn Nottage
Myself
Touch
See
" I wrote 'Ruined' and 'Vera Stark' at the same time. That's just how my brain functions - when I'm dwelling someplace very heavy, I need a release. "
Lynn Nottage
Brain
Time
Same
" In the business of war, the role of women is really to maintain normalcy and ensure that there is cultural continuity. "
Lynn Nottage
Women
War
Role
" 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. "
Lynn Nottage
Run
Men
Message
" 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. "
Lynn Nottage
Art
Beyond
Find
" When you're fighting for an increasingly smaller portion of the pie, you turn against each other; you create reasons to hate each other. "
Lynn Nottage
You
Turn
Create