I think we are seeing the absolute and utter collapse of male politicians in this [U.S] country and we're seeing what the underpinnings of the power structure are, which are sexist underpinnings.

When I was younger I was much more polemical and didactic, much less trusting. Inherently my own vision of the world would weave its way through the characters. Also, my concerns are changing. What happens is you write a few plays and get boxed into some idea of what your concerns are and what you're supposed to be writing about.

Women not only get violated, but then we take on the struggle to end it too... As a man, how could the destruction of women be anything to you but devastating? Think about the fact that the women being hurt are your mothers, daughters, sisters.

I'm feeling a kind of liberty to write about what's interesting to me without worrying about what I should be writing about. And that feels good.

We're always learning. We're all in the process of decolonizing ourselves - removing all the parts of us that are sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist. I mean, everybody in society needs to be in this process because everybody's been brought up in a misogynist, racist, homophobic, transphobic culture.

With the Gulf spill, I absolutely merged in the time when I had that infection. I couldn't get out of the Gulf spill. There were so many similarities: the drains and the siphoning and the tubes. And also in the way the earth was hurt, the ocean was bleeding. Remember the video cams of the oil gushing? I couldn't stop watching that.

Trauma dissociates us from the parts of our body that are wounded, so we have to leave our whole body. It's a journey you take your whole life, that coming back in, re-landing in your body, in your self, on the Earth. I think one of the reasons it's been so easy, in a way, for us to violate both women and the Earth is this profound dissociation that exists in everyone.