I was taught to lie at a young age. . . . I think that [A PARK IN OUR HOUSE] describes what people make out of their reality in a totalitarian system like Castro's. They take flight and move into the imagination in order to transcend their immediate reality. I had to write this play. It helped me understand my own loss of innocence.

If you think of dramaturgy in North America, which is so realistic and so literal sometimes, sometimes what theaters - especially dramaturgs - ask for is more information, which sometimes can really weigh down a play. There's only so much information a play can have. If you start putting in so much information, it becomes something completely different, it doesn't sing.

I think that the Pulitzer Prize is definitely a blessing, but it's also a curse. Because I think that it is a blessing because the work gets more exposure, especially that particular play and then other works of yours too. And then it's a curse because people anticipate that you will write something like you've already written. I think it's really wrong because, you know, I think, as a writer, I'm in a process and I'm somewhere in that process, and I need to continue to develop.

I feel like I have to be a walking encyclopedia - I constantly have to be explaining myself - especially when I do table work or when I'm talking to a dramaturg about, you know, the culture, but also what I'm trying to do as a writer in this particular play. You know, you have to protect yourself too.

I actually cut my sentences a lot. I'm very aware of the actor, giving them too many words - just a mouthful of words - it's difficult sometimes for an actor. So I'm kind of aware of breaking sometimes the line, the sentence with a comma where maybe there wouldn't be a comma there. Just to give a breathing space for the actor, just to be aware of that.

I've been a little disappointed in directors in America. I'm really after a theater that doesn't just deal with the actual texts that I brought in. But with a director that really deals with images too, that takes the play to another level. We have to remember that theater takes place in the third dimension, and we have to take into consideration the visual aspect of the play. I think images are important for the theater. Because I do write images.

I think I have a certain kind of style. I think at the same time, I'm aware that there's certain things that I did as a playwright in certain plays, and I try not to repeat myself, even though I have a certain kind of sensibility, and I tend to gravitate toward certain things.