Lynn Nottage in Five Plays

One of America’s greatest living Black voices, Lynn Nottage has created a body of work that puts her in conversation with some of the theatre’s most powerful and moving dramatists, as well as one that has been justly-awarded with a whole host of prizes and awards. The first (and only) woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice, she is also the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Fellowship, the PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award and is a member of the Theater Hall of Fame.

Lynn Nottage’s work stands out for the way it centers authentic, lived-in Black voices throughout time, as her plays’ settings span much of the 20th and 21st centuries. Nottage’s heroes (more often heroines) are worldly, tough, lovelorn, striving, smart, multifaceted characters. Their journeys are not able to be simply reduced to struggle or redemption; rather, they move through the world with the depth and power that for so long remained unseen on the stage for Black characters. While she has already created shows that will live long in the memories of theatre-goers, she continues to create new work to this day, shaping the future of the American theatre as she does so.

To learn more about Lynn Nottage, explore this collection of five plays which move from decade to decade, sandwich shop to seamstress’ house – all with Nottage’s singular talent for bringing oft-sidelined eras in American history to vivid, vibrant life.

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Intimate Apparel (2003) (US)

Nottage’s earliest major success immediately established her ability to access sweeping emotion and historical accuracy. Intimate Apparel centers on Esther, a gifted African American seamstress living in 1905 New York City, as she searches for stability in her relationships with two men who angle for her affections. Though leading a life that provides joy to so many, she remains lonely, longing for a husband and a future. Through a mutual acquaintance, she begins a correspondence with a Caribbean man named George, who soon persuades her that they should marry, sight unseen. However, Esther’s heart is drawn to the Hasidic shopkeeper from whom she buys cloth and his heart to hers.

Both a tender romance and a vibrant insight into Black living at the turn of the 20th century, Intimate Apparel finds beauty in work and craft, both personal and professional. The play’s off-Broadway production, which starred Viola Davis, Corey Stoll and Lauren Velez, was awarded the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Play and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding off-Broadway Play. In the play, larger historical eras were conveyed through the eyes of the individuals who were just trying to survive and find their happiness. Yet despite the focus on the personal, it has a clear grandeur and majesty. Later adapted into an opera, Intimate Apparel informed audiences that they were seeing the work of a playwright destined for big things.

Ruined (2008) (US)

Ruined’s delicate interplay between the personal and the political delivered Nottage her first Pulitzer Prize for Drama, an award well-deserved for a work that the New York Times called, “strong and absorbing… a clear-eyed celebration of endurance.” Set in a small mining town in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ruined follows Mama Nadi, a shrewd businesswoman in a land torn apart by civil war. While wartime plays often highlight the male perspective and experience, Nottage chooses to explore how women are not simply passive victims of violence or neutral observers. For better or worse, they control their own destiny.  As Mama Nadi attempts to protect her waitresses, all of whom provide a variety of “services” to the soldiers and miners that inhabit their remote town, thought-provoking moral questions about power and will arise. Does being shrewd businesswoman necessitate privileging profit above all else? How far will someone go to survive? Can a price be placed on a human life?

It was these sorts of absorbing debates, filtered through a setting and perspective rarely seen on stage, that propelled Ruined to such critical and public praise. The play established Nottage as one of the most important voices in modern theatre, and a creative whose voice was indisputably unique. Despite the lofty expectations that such a play would place on any writer, Nottage still manages to meet them in her later work, as we will soon explore.

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2011) (US)

A tonal departure from Ruined – although no less smart and incisive – Nottage’s next play was a riotous homage to the screwball comedies of the 1930s filtered through a Black lens. A funny and irreverent look at racial stereotypes in Hollywood, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark 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. Continuing her fascination with history and the singular stories that were often pushed to the background, Nottage explores the way Hollywood reduced Black actors to stereotypes while creating vivid, three-dimensional characters of her own.

Nominated for nine AUDELCO Awards and six Drama Desk Awards in 2011, the play undoubtedly resonated with audiences frustrated with the lack of attention paid by Hollywood (and Broadway) to their stories throughout their years. The Second Stage Theater production, which starred Sanaa Lathan as Vera and Stephanie J. Block as Gloria, was highly praised for its smart and thought-provoking comedy. With the play, Nottage demonstrates a theatrical variety that shows she is able to work wonders in whatever genre she sets her mind to.

Sweat (2015) (US)

While many of her other works gracefully explore the American past, Sweat brought Nottage’s forceful and emotive dialogue squarely into the still-raw present. Written at a time of great political upheaval, Sweat explores economic decline and racial tension, friendships tested by increased financial precocity and bonds formed by shared backgrounds. Scenes in Sweat move between 2000 and 2008, allowing Nottage to deftly explore the factors that led to the culture of distrust and fear that would begin to animate many social shifts in American history, both during the economic recession and at the time of the play’s conception. With what the New Yorker described as having the, “working-class naturalism of Clifford Odets,” Sweat takes place in Reading, PA, one of the poorest cities in America, where a group of down-and-out factory workers struggle to keep their present lives in balance, ignorant of the financial devastation looming in their near futures. Based on Nottage’s extensive research and interviews with real residents of Reading, the play provides a topical reflection of the then-present and the poignant consequences of America’s economic decline.

First performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2015 before moving to Arena Stage in Washington, Sweat opened off-Broadway at The Public Theater on November 3, 2016. It would then move to Broadway, premiering at Studio 54 in March 2017. An immediate success, the play would win Nottage her second Pulitzer Prize for Drama and go on to be nominated for three Tony Awards, three Outer Critics Circle Awards and three Drama League Awards. With Sweat, Nottage became the first and only woman to ever win two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama – a record that reflects her unparalleled status as a titan of modern theatre.

Clyde’s (2021) (US)

Nottage’s most recent work showcases an elegance and poignancy that proves once again that her writing can speak to any generation or decade. Debuted on Broadway at the Hayes Theater in a production starring Uzo Aduba and Ron Cephas Jones, Clyde’s is a dramatic comedy that neither shies away for drama nor sacrifices laughs. It moves nimbly between tones, elevating both genres with passion and intelligence. As a result, the production was critically-lauded, winning four Drama Desk Awards and going on to be nominated for five Tony Awards.

In Clyde’s, a truck stop sandwich shop offers its formerly incarcerated kitchen staff a shot at redemption. Even as the shop’s callous owner tries to keep them down, the staff members learn to reclaim their lives, find purpose and be inspired to dream by their shared quest to create the perfect sandwich. With many moving moments where characters describe their perfect bite and the sensory journeys it took them on, Nottage took something as simple as a sandwich and treats it with the respect given to high art. If a sandwich stop is the place where we “preach the gospel of good eating,” then her most recent work abounds with the warmth and light and love of a church choir.

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To discover more of Lynn Nottage’s emotive and grand work, explore the Lynn Nottage Collection in the US.