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I'm always hyperaware of the way in which working people are portrayed on the stage.
Lynn Nottage -
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
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My hobby is raising my children.
Lynn Nottage -
'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.'
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.
Lynn Nottage -
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.
Lynn Nottage -
I think sometimes you need distance to reflect.
Lynn Nottage -
Women are standing up and leaning forward and asserting their power.
Lynn Nottage
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I try to be led by my curiosity.
Lynn Nottage -
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.
Lynn Nottage -
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 -
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 -
Each play I write has its own unique origin story.
Lynn Nottage -
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.
Lynn Nottage
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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.
Lynn Nottage -
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.
Lynn Nottage -
I do see myself as an old-fashioned storyteller. But there's always a touch of the political in my plays.
Lynn Nottage -
Like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, I try to balance reality with how we'd like the world to be.
Lynn Nottage -
Broadway is a closed ecosystem.
Lynn Nottage -
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.
Lynn Nottage
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For me, playwriting is sharing my experiences, telling my stories.
Lynn Nottage -
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.
Lynn Nottage -
By the sheer act of writing, we are trying to place value on the stories that we're invested in.
Lynn Nottage -
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.
Lynn Nottage