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.

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.

I always describe race as the final taboo in American theatre. There's a real reluctance to have that conversation in an open, honest way on the stage.

Broadway is a closed ecosystem.

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.

What I often do when I'm writing, if I can't find that story, I go out and I hunt for it.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

We use metaphors to express our own truths.

My hobby is raising my children.

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 need a release from whatever I'm writing.

Each play I write has its own unique origin story.

In the business of war, the role of women is really to maintain normalcy and ensure that there is cultural continuity.

Plays are getting smaller and smaller, not because playwrights minds are shrinking but because of the economics.

I love Twitter.

I knew that there was a great deal of depth and life that was sitting just beyond my mother's gaze.

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.

There's never any ebb in human misery.

By the time I reached 50, I'd accumulated many unresolved fears and desires.

Growing up in New York City, I'd flirted with the idea of driving, but between the subway and the sidewalks, I'd never needed to learn.

A lot of the factories that had been the bedrock of many small cities were being shut down, which led me to investigate what I'm calling the 'de-industrial revolution.'

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

I think folks who are resistant to engaging in art become less so once they encounter art that really reflects them.

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.

It remains an incredible struggle for women in theater, and, in particular, playwrights and directors, to get their work seen and to not only get seen, but to get it to Broadway.

The presence of a bed changes the way people interact.

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.

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

For me, the first thing is to tell a good story.

The stage is the last bastion of segregation.

Winning the second Pulitzer firmly places me in conversation with this culture.

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.

There were not a lot of women in the theater department - it was really run by men, and so the message was that women can be onstage, but women can't really be backstage.

I'm a contemporary playwright in a postmodern world.

Who wants to see the same play again? I certainly don't want to write the same play again and again.

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

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

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.

There is an enduring feeling that women can write domestic dramas but don't have the muscularity or the vision to write state-of-the-nation narratives.

I'm always hyperaware of the way in which working people are portrayed on the stage.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

Broadway's never my end goal because of the plays I write. These are tough plays. Of course there's a lot of humor, but my goal is just to reach as wide an audience as possible, however that happens.