Lynn Nottage Quotes
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By the time I reached 50, I'd accumulated many unresolved fears and desires.
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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.
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I'm interested in people who are dwelling outside the mainstream. And very often, those people happen to be woman of color.
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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.
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I'm always hyperaware of the way in which working people are portrayed on the stage.
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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.
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The more you go to a theatre and the more you hear stories you aren't necessarily familiar with, the more open you become.
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Plays are getting smaller and smaller, not because playwrights minds are shrinking but because of the economics.
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We need to diversify the people who are backstage and producing and marketing these shows. It's the limitations of these people that are holding Broadway back.
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My hobby is raising my children.
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'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.'
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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.
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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.
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Like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, I try to balance reality with how we'd like the world to be.
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I'm a schizophrenic writer.
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For me, playwriting is sharing my experiences, telling my stories.
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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.
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I try to be led by my curiosity.
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I think that human beings were incredibly resilient; otherwise, we wouldn't keep going.
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I think of myself as a healing artist.
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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.
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I think sometimes you need distance to reflect.
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Each play I write has its own unique origin story.
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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.'