Celebrating the birth & legacy of

LYNN NOTTAGE

“I feel it’s my social responsibility to shine a light on areas that don’t get seen. My personal feeling is that it’s an artist’s responsibility to be engaged with the culture. And when the culture is going through turmoil, I think an artist can’t ignore that.”

— Lynn Nottage

Lynn Nottage is an original voice in American theater, a playwright whose entertaining and thought-provoking works address contemporary issues with empathy and humor. Her work covers a wide range of subjects but is always on the side of the marginalized and dispossessed. She is the only woman to have won the Pulitzer for drama twice.

She was born November 2, 1964 in Brooklyn, New York.  Her father was a social worker and mother a teacher.   Growing up in a household with lots of laughter and lots of art, Nottage recalls coming home from school to women sitting around the table telling stories.   As she grew older, she realized the stories she heard around the table were not being told on the American stage:  “By and large the American stage is where our mythology is woven.  What happens to the mythology of African American women if we don’t have a forum for ourselves?   And so I think that’s in part why I write and why I’m a storyteller on the stage.” 

Her first play, Poof (1993) was presented at the Actors Theater of Louisville during the Humana Festival of New American Plays and was later recorded for public radio featuring Audra McDonald and Tonya Pinkins.  Early works (including Crumbs from the Table of Joy (1995), Mud, River, Stone (1997) and Por’Knockers (1995)), reveal Nottage’s rich poetic imagination as she portrays periods of American history from unexpected vantage points and crafts complex characters of a kind that have garnered little notice among other writers and historians. 

“The more you go to a theatre and the more you hear stories you aren’t necessarily familiar with, the more open you become.”

— Lynn Nottage

Her play Intimate Apparel (2003) centers on a young black seamstress in early 20th-century New York, a woman working her way through the social confines of her time — predicaments that continue to haunt us today.  The play was co-commissioned by South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa and Center Stage in Baltimore.  It opened to great acclaim Off-Broadway in 2004 starring Viola Davis and was adapted into an opera whose run at Lincoln Center was suspended in March 2020 due to COVID-19.

In 2009, Nottage received the Pulitzer Prize, Drama Desk, Obie and Outer Critics Circle Award for her play, Ruined.  Set in a small mining town in the Congo, the story exposes the horrors endured in a country ravaged by war – especially by women.  Nottage traveled to Africa and interviewed women impacted by the second Congo war.  Their stories of sexual abuse and assault became the basis for the play.   

Nottage’s next play, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2010) is a 70-year journey through the life of Vera Stark, a headstrong African-American maid and budding actress, and her tangled relationship with her boss, a white Hollywood star desperately grasping to hold on to her career.

In 2017, Ms. Nottage received her second Pulitzer Prize for Sweat.  Set in Reading, Pennsylvania (where she spent two and a half years interviewing residents), much of the action takes place in a bar where steelworkers hang out.  Described as “a powerful and emotional look at identity, race, economy and humanity,” the play was also awarded the Obie Award for Playwriting and marked Nottage’s Broadway debut.

Other plays include Milma’s Tale (2018) and Floyd’s (2019) as well as the libretto for The Secret Life of Bees (2019).  Nottage has developed projects for HBO and Showtime and was a producer and writer for the first season of She’s Gotta Have It.

Lynn Nottage's powerful work as a dramatist provides audiences with provocative stories in which her characters confront some of society's most complex issues, illuminating humanity itself.

“Nottage’s imaginative exploration of history, her ability to find resonance in unexpected moments in the past, and her sensitive evocation of social concerns have made her a powerful voice in theater.”

— MacArthur Foundation

Portions of this biography were provided by The MacArthur Foundation and TheGuardian.com
 

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✨ Next week… ✨

We will celebrate the birth of Lynn Nottage with a performance from one of her plays by Actors Co-op company member, Rodrick Jean-Charles!
This performance will be delivered to you for safe viewing at home, via email.

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