My connection to music is so strong. I cling to it. I vibe out to it. I release stress to it. Music is really always close to me. It's really present in my work in terms of how I relate to characters is through rhythm and sound, even in their speech.

The freedom that I wanted as a kid would - probably would not have been good for me and not in the way in which I wanted it.

How do I transform and be believable as Krogstad in "A Doll's House" or Sir Peter Teazle in "A School for Scandal".

My dad moved to New York after he won "Soul Train" and the car and got settled in out there and was able to step right into Dance Theatre of Harlem and felt like he was in a show called "Omnibus" and "American Dance Machine."

I went to a mosque in Philadelphia with [my wife] in December 24, 1999. And we we went to this mosque in Philly, and I just had such a strong reaction to the prayer. And I was really emotionally - I felt really grounded at that time. And so to be in this prayer and the imam is doing the prayer in Arabic and I don't understand a word of Arabic but I just remember these tears just coming down my face and it just really connecting to my spirit in a way that felt like I needed to pay attention to that.

There was things just like not being able to date or - I'm talking like 15, 16 - like just certain things that my friends started to do. Like, they started to get phone calls from girls or like, you know, go and hang out 10, 11 at night, kind of going to the movies. There were just certain things that - it's not that I couldn't do all of those things. It's just that every choice was really deliberate and conscious and thought out and sort of balanced against the religion in a way where I felt - I wasn't necessarily trying to convert at 12 like [my mother] was.

What inspires me today is a desire to get closer to an understanding of what my artistic capacities are with the hope of organically sharing my gifts with an audience in the most heightened way I possibly can.