My plays are talky; I say shut up and listen. They are about black men talking, and in American society you don't too often have that because the feeling is: 'What do black men have to say?'

American society as a whole has a very short memory. There are a lot of things we don't know or have allowed ourselves to forget. I was visiting a high school, Seward High School, in 1987, and one of the students in the classroom thought that slavery had ended in 1960. He was very serious about it.

I don't look at our society today too much. My focus is still in the past, and part of the reason is because what I do - the wellspring of art, or what I do - l get from the blues. So I listen to the music of a particular period that I'm working on, and I think inside the music is clues to what is happening with the people.

Society is a madhouse whose wardens are the officials and the police.

Society is madhouse whose wardens are the officials and the police

He's a great coach. He's a straight-forward guy. He knows what he's talking about technique-wise.