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.

It's much easier to conjure characters strictly from your imagination than to have to think about whether you're representing people in a truthful way.

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.

Plays are getting smaller and smaller, not because playwrights minds are shrinking but because of the economics.

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.

Each play I write has its own unique origin story.

I'm interested in the moments where the audience is restless. I'm interested in the moments where they lean in and become incredibly engaged: the laughter, the silence. All of that is part of how I think about shaping and rewriting the play.