Lynn Nottage

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.

— Lynn Nottage

I find my characters and stories in many varied places; sometimes they pop out of newspaper articles, obscure historical texts, lively dinner party conversations and some even crawl out of the dusty remote recesses of my imagination.

— Lynn Nottage

We go in and try to be completely transparent with them: I am not a journalist, I’m a playwright, and I’m developing a piece that is creative and not going to be solely based on their lives but inspired by conversations that we have.

— Lynn Nottage

The thing is, I can’t control that built-in bias because it’s going to exist. What I can do is reflect the world through my very unique prism and perhaps people will be able to relate. I can’t control how it’s received, nor do I want to control how it’s perceived. What I want is for people to go into the theatre and in some way their perception is shifted, so that if they do enter with their biases, perhaps they won’t leave with them.

— Lynn Nottage

My motto when I was writing this was ‘replace judgment with curiosity’.

— Lynn Nottage

It’s much easier to conjure characters strictly from your imagination than to have to think about whether you’re representing people in a truthful way. These characters are purely fiction—they’re inspired by people I met—which I think gave me a certain amount of leeway that I wouldn’t have had otherwise were it a verbatim piece.

— Lynn Nottage

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.

— Lynn Nottage