I have a really, really difficult time with dramaturgy sometimes in America, because I write about other cultures. I write about a culture that is very difficult, it is very foreign to a North American. A lot of people don't know about what's happening.

I feel like I have to be a walking encyclopedia - I constantly have to be explaining myself - especially when I do table work or when I'm talking to a dramaturg about, you know, the culture, but also what I'm trying to do as a writer in this particular play. You know, you have to protect yourself too.

I think I have a certain kind of style. I think at the same time, I'm aware that there's certain things that I did as a playwright in certain plays, and I try not to repeat myself, even though I have a certain kind of sensibility, and I tend to gravitate toward certain things.

Theater is about interpretation and what an actor and what a director brings to a piece too. I'm open to it every time I work with a director and a group of actors. I have to be open to that interpretation. I'm not one of those hysterical playwrights that come and say, This is not what I intended to do. It's one rendition of the piece.

I was taught to lie at a young age. . . . I think that [A PARK IN OUR HOUSE] describes what people make out of their reality in a totalitarian system like Castro's. They take flight and move into the imagination in order to transcend their immediate reality. I had to write this play. It helped me understand my own loss of innocence.