Lynn Nottage (born November 2, 1964) is an American playwright whose work often focuses on the experience of working-class people, particularly working-class people who are Black. She has received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: in 2009 for her play Ruined, and in 2017 for her play Sweat. She was the first (and remains the only) woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama two times.
Nottage is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship and was included in Time magazine's 2019 list of the 100 Most Influential People. She is currently an associate professor of playwriting at Columbia University and an artist-in-residence at the Park Avenue Armory.
Early and personal life
Lynn Nottage was born on November 2, 1964, in Brooklyn, New York. Her mother Ruby Nottage was a schoolteacher and principal; her father Wallace was a child psychologist. She went to Saint Ann's School for elementary school, and graduated from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School. While in high school, she wrote her first full-length play, The Darker Side of Verona, about an African-American Shakespeare company traveling through the South.
She attended Brown University (AB 1986, DFA 2011) and the Yale School of Drama (MFA, 1989). After graduation, Nottage worked in Amnesty International's press office for four years. Most recently, Nottage received honorary degrees from Juilliard and Albright College.
Nottage is married to filmmaker Tony Gerber, with whom she has two children, Ruby Aiyo and Melkamu Gerber.
Career
Nottage's plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world.
Plays
Intimate Apparel
One of her best-known plays is Intimate Apparel.
In 1905 New York, Esther, a Black seamstress, lives in a boarding house for women, and sews intimate apparel for clients who range from wealthy white patrons to prostitutes. One by one, the other denizens of the boarding house marry and move away, but Esther remains, lonely and longing for a husband and a future. Her plan is to find the right man and use the money she's saved to open a beauty parlor where Black women will be treated as royally as the white women she sews for.
Co-commissioned and produced at Baltimore's Center Stage, it premiered in February 2003 and South Coast Repertory. The Off-Broadway production at Roundabout Theatre Company opened in 2004, starring Viola Davis, and receiving critical acclaim. It received the 2004 AUDELCO Viv Award for Playwriting; AUDELCO (Audience Development Committee) recognizes and honors excellence in Black theatre. Intimate Apparel has since been commissioned by the MET / Lincoln Center to be adapted into an opera, and will be composed by Ricky Ian Gordon.
Since 2004, Intimate Apparel has become one of the most produced plays in America.
Ruined
Ruined dramatizes the plight of Congolese women surviving civil war. Set in a small mining town in Democratic Republic of Congo, Ruined follows Mama Nadi, a shrewd businesswoman protecting and profiting from the women she shelters.The play deals with the role of women in war and the societal stigma around Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
It premiered in 2007 in the Goodman Theatre (Chicago) New Stages Series, and transferred to Off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club in February 2009. Ruined was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Ruined also received the 2009 AUDELCO Viv Award for Dramatic Production of the Year.
On May 13, 2009, Nottage spoke at a public reception in Washington, D.C. following a United States Senate Foreign Relations joint subcommittee hearing entitled "Confronting Rape and Other Forms of Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones," with case studies on the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan.
On October 12, 2009, Nottage spoke at the United Nations as part of the Exhibit CONGO/WOMEN Portraits of War: The Democratic Republic of Congo.
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is a seventy-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. When both women land roles in the same Southern epic, the story behind the camera leaves Vera with a surprising and controversial legacy.