Lynn Nottage Quotes
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I try to be led by my curiosity.
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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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I think of myself as a healing artist.
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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.'
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We use metaphors to express our own truths.
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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.
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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.
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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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When you begin a play, you're going to have to spend a lot of time with those characters, so those characters are going to have to be rich enough that you want to take a very long journey with them. That's how I begin thinking about what I want to write about and who I want to write about.
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The presence of a bed changes the way people interact.
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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.
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Winning the second Pulitzer firmly places me in conversation with this culture.
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When you're fighting for an increasingly smaller portion of the pie, you turn against each other; you create reasons to hate each other.
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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.
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In the business of war, the role of women is really to maintain normalcy and ensure that there is cultural continuity.
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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.
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I think sometimes you need distance to reflect.
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I like to go into a space, listen, absorb, and then interpret.
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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.
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The stage is the last bastion of segregation.
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Who wants to see the same play again? I certainly don't want to write the same play again and again.
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Here's the dilemma of the modern age: There used to be actions that workers could take, in the form of a strike. But now, that's being pre-empted by lockouts. They don't even have that leverage to protect their jobs.
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It's very important for me to have dialogues across racial lines.
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'Intimate Apparel' is a lyrical meditation on one woman's loneliness and desire. 'Fabulation' is a very fast-paced play of the MTV generation.