used with precision, sparingly, inventively. I’m interested in
a plethora of voices when writing about working Americans:
those who built this country, including the Americans who
weren’t even citizens in the time of Reconstruction — the
formerly enslaved who brought us the revolutionary ideas
of free schools, and libraries, and land re-distribution.
Some of the best and most democratic ideas have come
from the Americans who had the least, who still have the
least. Those are the voices that interest me.
Signature: Why do you think it’s powerful to put the past,
or history, onstage?
NW: I think that so much of what we’re questioning now can
be better understood by looking at the past. As Faulkner
says, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” For me,
writing about the past is a way of learning about this
moment. When I pick an era in which to place a story, I like
to learn about the decades before and the decades after in
order to see how it all fits together. There’s so much that
has been buried, and history is far more exciting and
eventful than what’s in my head. The past that is with
us this very moment, that’s where I get my fuel.
Signature: I know that you’re interested in what you refer
to as an “inclusive” theatre, an idea that interests us here at
Signature as well. What does that mean, or look like, to you?
NW: I’m interested in the voices, lives, acts, histories that challenge the constant pressure of consumerism and compromise,
not to mention complacency. The majority don’t get to air their
grievances, their sorrows, their victories and I hope to provide
a kind of platform for them to whistle and shout and whisper
sweet-everythings. That for me is one way of looking at a theatre of inclusion. It is to take risks, to invite in the controversial
In Her Own Words
and contradictory (as opposed to the conversational).
Signature is also a theatre of inclusion. I was speaking with
Jim [Houghton] today about how Signature has only one
entrance — how the artists, staff, and audience members all
come into the building the same way. It’s a move toward undermining hierarchy and I like it. It’s a vision of a more democratic
theatre. I’ve fallen in love with the building, with the Griffin especially. It means a lot to me to have three confirmed productions in this theatre. That rarely ever happens in a playwright’s
life. And it’s an incredible freedom that I won’t have to think
about what Jim calls “the white noise of reception.” When
I first began writing, I was still a student at the University of
Iowa when my play In the Heart of America made th