Top 114 Quotes & Sayings by Lynn Nottage
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American playwright Lynn Nottage.
Last updated on November 8, 2024.
There's never any ebb in human misery.
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.
I knew that there was a great deal of depth and life that was sitting just beyond my mother's gaze.
I've been asked a lot why didn't 'Ruined' go to Broadway. It was the most successful play that Manhattan Theatre Club has ever had in that particular space, and yet we couldn't find a home on Broadway.
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'm interested in people who are dwelling outside the mainstream. And very often, those people happen to be woman of color.
We use metaphors to express our own truths.
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.
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.'
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 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.
The people sometimes who are closest to us are the ones who bear the brunt of our frustration.
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.
I think folks who are resistant to engaging in art become less so once they encounter art that really reflects them.
I feel like 'Sweat' arrived on Broadway at the moment that it needed to. I feel like a commercial audience was not prepared for 'Ruined' or 'Intimate Apparel' for many different reasons.
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.
Plays are getting smaller and smaller, not because playwrights minds are shrinking but because of the economics.
The act of saying what you do helps shape you as an artist.
For me, playwriting is sharing my experiences, telling my stories.
Broadway is a closed ecosystem.
Each play I write has its own unique origin story.
It's very important for me to have dialogues across racial lines.
I would like there to be gender equity. I would like the Broadway season to reflect sort of the demographic of the country.
I see procrastination and research as part of my artistic process.
The essence of creativity is to look beyond where you can actually see. I don't want to dwell in same place too long.
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 know what I'm trying to say, so I'm always open to learning how to say it.
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.
I do see myself as an old-fashioned storyteller. But there's always a touch of the political in my plays.
I was really interested in the way in which poverty and economic stagnation were transforming and corrupting the American narrative.
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.
My hobby is raising my children.
My fears about where theater is going - it's the Hollywood model, where people are chasing the almighty dollar and making commercial decisions based on nothing more than generating income for themselves and their theaters.
I'm a schizophrenic writer.
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.
My interest in theatre and storytelling began in my mother's kitchen. It was a meeting place for my mother's large circle of friends.
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 need a release from whatever I'm writing.
Women are standing up and leaning forward and asserting their power.
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 stage is the last bastion of segregation.
The presence of a bed changes the way people interact.
In the business of war, the role of women is really to maintain normalcy and ensure that there is cultural continuity.
For me, the first thing is to tell a good story.
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.
The theatre should reflect America as it's lived in today. And that is a multicultural America.
'Ruined' was a play which was somewhat of an anomaly in that I did not take a commission until it was finished because I really wanted to explore the subject matter unencumbered. Otherwise, I felt as though I'd have the voice of dramaturges and literary managers saying, 'This is great, but we'll never be able to produce it.'
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.
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.
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.
'Intimate Apparel' is a lyrical meditation on one woman's loneliness and desire. 'Fabulation' is a very fast-paced play of the MTV generation.
Ultimately, we're incredibly resilient creatures. People really do get on with the business of living.
I am a Tony voter; it is an honor that I take seriously. Each season, I enter the process with a degree of enthusiasm and optimism, which dissipates as I slowly plow through show after show.
I like to go into a space, listen, absorb, and then interpret.
Replace judgment with curiosity.
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.
When you're fighting for an increasingly smaller portion of the pie, you turn against each other; you create reasons to hate each other.
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.
By the time I reached 50, I'd accumulated many unresolved fears and desires.
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