QUOTES by Lynn Nottage
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
The more you go to a theatre and the more you hear stories you aren't necessarily familiar with, the more open you become.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
As a woman of color, slowly and with some coercing, the not-for-profit theaters around the country are beginning to recognize and embrace the power of our stories, but with regards to Broadway and other commercial venues, we remain very much marginalized and excluded from that larger creative conversation.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
I wrote 'Ruined' and 'Vera Stark' at the same time. That's just how my brain functions - when I'm dwelling someplace very heavy, I need a release.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
By the sheer act of writing, we are trying to place value on the stories that we're invested in.
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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.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
I think that human beings were incredibly resilient; otherwise, we wouldn't keep going.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
Before I start, I create a set list that I listen to while I'm writing. For 'Intimate Apparel,' I loaded Erik Satie, Scott Joplin, klezmer music, and the American jazz performer and composer Reginald Robinson.
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My grandfather was a Pullman porter, and my father put his way through college by cleaning floors at night in the libraries. I understand that working people are in some way the bedrock of my existence and the existence of many people here.
Quote by -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.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
In my family history, there are generations of women who were abandoned by men. It's one of the themes of my family.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
We need to diversify the people who are backstage and producing and marketing these shows. It's the limitations of these people that are holding Broadway back.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
Ultimately, we're incredibly resilient creatures. People really do get on with the business of living.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
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.'
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
The great thing about 'Vera Stark' is that my research was watching movies, screwball comedies, so I could literally sit back and relax.
Quote by -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.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
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.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
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.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
I wonder: Would there be a black president if people hadn't already begun imagining, through film and television, that a black man is president? It's self-actualization.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
Like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, I try to balance reality with how we'd like the world to be.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
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.
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We live in a global society, and I don't think we can talk about, quote unquote, 'American themes' anymore.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
All of my plays are about people who have been marginalized... erased from the public record.
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I'm interested in people who are dwelling outside the mainstream. And very often, those people happen to be woman of color.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
Once working people discover that, collectively, we have more power than we do as individual silos, then we become an incredibly powerful force. But I think that there are powers that be that are invested in us remaining divided along racial lines, along economic lines.
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I remain committed to telling the stories of women of the African diaspora, particularly those stories that don't often find their way into the mainstream media.
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The theatre should reflect America as it's lived in today. And that is a multicultural America.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
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.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
People probably have different philosophies about this, but 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.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
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.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage
In senior year at college, Paula Vogel was my playwriting teacher; she is the first person to introduce me to the notion that a woman could actually forge a career in the theatre. Up until then, the possibility seemed remote and inaccessible, as I had very few role models who directly touched my life.
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I was really interested in the way in which poverty and economic stagnation were transforming and corrupting the American narrative.
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The essence of creativity is to look beyond where you can actually see. I don't want to dwell in same place too long.
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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.
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When you're fighting for an increasingly smaller portion of the pie, you turn against each other; you create reasons to hate each other.
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There was no way I was going to write about Africa and not include the triumphant continuity of life that had also been part of my experience there. It's not just war and famine all the time.
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The people sometimes who are closest to us are the ones who bear the brunt of our frustration.
Quote by -Lynn Nottage