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.

Each play I write has its own unique origin story.

African American women in particular have incredible buying power. Statistically, we go to the movies more than anyone. We have made Tyler Perrys career. His films open with $25 million almost consistently.

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.

I want the audience, when they leave, to think of the characters on the stage in three dimensions. I want them to have empathy. I also want them to think about engaging more with where we are culturally.

I'm interested in the moments where the audience is restless. I'm interested in the moments where they lean in and become incredibly engaged: the laughter, the silence. All of that is part of how I think about shaping and rewriting the play.

A play that forces us to question our moral responsibility to the victims of human rights abuse.

I see the audience as the final collaborator. I think it's kind of bullshit when people say, I'm not interested in the audience reaction. I'm like, Then why do you do theater? You can write a book, then you don't have to see how the audience reacts. It's a living, breathing thing.

Hopefully this is going to be a trend, the beginning of a movement to reclaim theater for the artist and not commerce. I think there's a level of fatigue. Artists are tired of having to create work that's then coopted by commercial demands. When you begin souping up the car, the car no longer feels like your own.

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

I was repeatedly told that there isn't an African American woman who can open a show on Broadway. I said, 'Well, how do we know? How do we know if we don't do it?' I said, 'I think you're wrong.'

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

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.

I need a release from whatever I'm writing.