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

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

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

My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.

I'm trying to take culture and put it onstage, demonstrate it is capable of sustaining you. There is no idea that can't be contained by life: Asian life, European life, certainly black life. My plays are about love, honor, duty, betrayal - things humans have written about since the beginning of time.

So somehow, things that seem extraneous to the play in reality are not. The scene lasts 37 minutes, and you only need 12 minutes of that for the plot. But if you pull the rest of it out, it's not my play.

You are responsible for the world that you live in. It is not government's responsibility. It is not your school's or your social club's or your church's or your neighbor's or your fellow citizen's. It is yours, utterly and singularly yours.