I want the audience, when they leave, to think of the characters on the stage in three dimensions. I want them to have empathy. I also want them to think about engaging more with where we are culturally.

I need a release from whatever I'm writing.

I feel it's my social responsibility to shine a light on areas that don't get seen. My personal feeling is that it's an artist's responsibility to be engaged with the culture. And when the culture is going through turmoil, I think an artist can't ignore that. I don't feel that every artist has to be politically engaged, but I can't imagine that you can be an active participant of this culture and not in some way reflect that in the work you are creating.

I can't quite remember the exact moment when I became obsessed with writing a play about the seemingly endless war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but I knew that I wanted to somehow tell the stories of the Congolese women caught in the cross-fire.

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.

Just because it’s a unique perspective doesn’t mean it can’t offer something universal.

In the business of war, the role of women is really to maintain normalcy and ensure that there is cultural continuity.