I was raised by a single psychologist mother and we spent every evening sitting at the kitchen table and dissecting our emotions and speculating about the inner life of everyone we knew.

I'm very interested in silence. And, more importantly, in what happens when people aren't talking on stage. I'm interested in letting actors play and do things between the lines. And in slowing everything down.

If I were less lazy, when my play was published, I would go and rewrite everything for the reader. But I don't do that. What people are reading is just me trying to get the actors and directors to do something or think about something.

I don't enjoy hearing the sound of my voice. The most important things for me are impossible to articulate extemporaneously.

If I think back to every rehearsal process for every play I've ever worked on, there's just so much crying at home. I barely sleep. There are moments of deep despair and anxiety, and then there are moments in rehearsal that are the most exhilarating; feeling seen and seeing everybody. Feeling like you have a purpose on the planet. A huge part of the process I enjoy is watching the actors figuring out what they can handle and what they can take and what they need from the director and me.

I was raised by a single psychologist mother and we spent every evening sitting at the kitchen table and dissecting our emotions and speculating about the inner life of everyone we knew.

I feel like the reason I ended up becoming a playwright is because I never choose the right word. As a kid, my fantasy profession was to be a novelist. But the thing about writing prose - and maybe great prose writers don't feel this way - but I always felt it was about choosing words. I was always like, "I have to choose the perfect word." And then it would kill me, and I would choose the wrong word or I would choose too many perfect words - I wrote really purple prose.