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.

If you lead with the anger, it will turn off the audience. And what I want is the audience to engage with the material and to listen and then to ask questions. I think that 'Ruined' was very successful at doing that.

A play that forces us to question our moral responsibility to the victims of human rights abuse.

When the play is still evolving I try to be at rehearsal as often as possible, and part of that casting process. You find new things when the language is living in different people's mouths.

I was repeatedly told that there isn't an African American woman who can open a show on Broadway. I said, 'Well, how do we know? How do we know if we don't do it?' I said, 'I think you're wrong.'

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.

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