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" I would like there to be gender equity. I would like the Broadway season to reflect sort of the demographic of the country. "

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" By the sheer act of writing, we are trying to place value on the stories that we're invested in. "

" It's very important for me to have dialogues across racial lines. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I love my people's history. I feel a huge responsibility to tell the stories of my past and my ancestors' past. "

" As a woman of color, slowly and with some coercing, the not-for-profit theaters around the country are beginning to recognize and embrace the power of our stories, but with regards to Broadway and other commercial venues, we remain very much marginalized and excluded from that larger creative conversation. "

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

" I do see myself as an old-fashioned storyteller. But there's always a touch of the political in my plays. "

" Each play I write has its own unique origin story. "

" Like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, I try to balance reality with how we'd like the world to be. "

" 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.' "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" '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.' "

" In listening to the narratives of the Congolese, I came to terms with the extent to which their bodies had become battlefields. "

" The theatre should reflect America as it's lived in today. And that is a multicultural America. "

" My interest in theatre and storytelling began in my mother's kitchen. It was a meeting place for my mother's large circle of friends. "

" All of my plays are about people who have been marginalized... erased from the public record. "

" Broadway is a closed ecosystem. "

" American audiences very rarely deal with material outside their borders. "

" 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. "

" The stage is the last bastion of segregation. "

" I know what I'm trying to say, so I'm always open to learning how to say it. "

" 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. "