Quotes from Lynn Nottage

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

The stage is the last bastion of segregation.

For me, playwriting is sharing my experiences, telling my stories.

Before I start, I create a set list that I listen to while I'm writing. For 'Intimate Apparel,' I loaded Erik Satie, Scott Joplin, klezmer music, and the American jazz performer and composer Reginald Robinson.

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

Saying, 'I'm going to create jobs' is great, but before you create jobs, something has to be offered to alleviate some of the suffering now.

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.

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.

It is such a joy to join a legacy of amazing female playwrights who have managed to break through the glass ceiling and reinvigorate the Broadway stage by bringing a fresh and necessary perspective.

Broadway is a closed ecosystem.

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.

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.

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.

Even in Congo, where conflicts are happening, people have births, weddings, deaths, and celebrations.

I wouldn't say I see my work as having a political ideology. Lynn Nottage certainly has a political ideology. I think that the work is an extension of who I am, but I don't think that when I write the play I'm looking to push the audience one way or another.

I'm a contemporary playwright in a postmodern world.

The essence of creativity is to look beyond where you can actually see. I don't want to dwell in same place too long.

I try to be led by my curiosity.