I'm a black American playwright. I couldn't be anything else. I make my art out of black American culture; they're all cut out of the same cloth. That's who I am; that's who I write about.

I dont write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but thats not why I write.

I first got involved in theater in 1968, at the height of a social tumult. I was a poet.

I believe in the American theatre. I believe in its power to inform about the human condition, its power to heal ... its power to uncover the truths we wrestle from uncertain and sometimes unyielding realities.

All of art is a search for ways of being, of living life more fully.

You get to the point where your demons, which are terrifying, get smaller and smaller and you get bigger and bigger.

I write for myself and my goal is bringing that world and that experience of black Americans to life on the stage and giving it a space there.