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" Broadway's never my end goal because of the plays I write. These are tough plays. Of course there's a lot of humor, but my goal is just to reach as wide an audience as possible, however that happens. "

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" I was really interested in the way in which poverty and economic stagnation were transforming and corrupting the American narrative. "

Lynn Nottage

Which

Way

Poverty

" 'Ruined' was a play which was somewhat of an anomaly in that I did not take a commission until it was finished because I really wanted to explore the subject matter unencumbered. Otherwise, I felt as though I'd have the voice of dramaturges and literary managers saying, 'This is great, but we'll never be able to produce it.' "

" I see procrastination and research as part of my artistic process. "

" I'm a contemporary playwright in a postmodern world. "

" We use metaphors to express our own truths. "

" 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. "

" In senior year at college, Paula Vogel was my playwriting teacher; she is the first person to introduce me to the notion that a woman could actually forge a career in the theatre. Up until then, the possibility seemed remote and inaccessible, as I had very few role models who directly touched my life. "

" I need a release from whatever I'm writing. "

" There's never any ebb in human misery. "

" I always thought of my mother as a warrior woman, and I became interested in pursuing stories of women who invent lives in order to survive. "

" I'm a schizophrenic writer. "

Lynn Nottage

Writer

Schizophrenic

" Winning the second Pulitzer firmly places me in conversation with this culture. "

" If you're looking at the people who head the institutions, there are very few African Americans or people of colour. I'm talking about the major theatres that position themselves as serving all audiences. What you find is, by and large, people who are shaping what we see, and the people who are the tastemakers are white. "

" I am a storyteller by trade. "

Lynn Nottage

Storyteller

Trade

" I feel like 'Sweat' arrived on Broadway at the moment that it needed to. I feel like a commercial audience was not prepared for 'Ruined' or 'Intimate Apparel' for many different reasons. "

" 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. "

" The more you go to a theatre and the more you hear stories you aren't necessarily familiar with, the more open you become. "

Lynn Nottage

You

Become

" 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. "

" The great thing about 'Vera Stark' is that my research was watching movies, screwball comedies, so I could literally sit back and relax. "

" Replace judgment with curiosity. "

" The stage is the last bastion of segregation. "

" 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. "

" By and large, the theatre establishment is run by a white majority. "

" 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. "

" The person whose work introduced me to the craft was Lorraine Hansberry. The person who taught me to love the craft was Tennessee Williams. The person who really taught me the power of the craft was August Wilson, and the person who taught me the political heft of the craft was Arthur Miller. "

" I'm interested in people who are dwelling outside the mainstream. And very often, those people happen to be woman of color. "

" 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. "

" It's much easier to conjure characters strictly from your imagination than to have to think about whether you're representing people in a truthful way. "

" In my family history, there are generations of women who were abandoned by men. It's one of the themes of my family. "