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

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.

The presence of a bed changes the way people interact.

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.

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.

When you're fighting for an increasingly smaller portion of the pie, you turn against each other; you create reasons to hate each other.

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

I teach at Columbia, and I'm always looking for books I can lose myself in during the 45 minutes I'm on the train.

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 was really interested in the way in which poverty and economic stagnation were transforming and corrupting the American narrative.