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'm very much inspired by the Latin music, especially the romantic boleros. Not that when I sit to write a play I listen to boleros. But I think it's part of my DNA, it's part of my upbringing. I grew up in a house where this is the kind of music my parents used to listen to. This is the kind of music I would even hear in my neighborhood. I think that sort of romanticism is part of the culture.

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'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.

Theater is about interpretation and what an actor and what a director brings to a piece too. I'm open to it every time I work with a director and a group of actors. I have to be open to that interpretation. I'm not one of those hysterical playwrights that come and say, "This is not what I intended to do." It's one rendition of the piece.

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 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.