Not available for this production.

Lynn Nottage (Playwright) is a playwright and a screenwriter. She is the first, and remains the only, woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice. Her plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world. Most recently, Nottage premiered MJ the Musical, directed by Christopher Wheeldon and featuring the music of Michael Jackson, at the Neil Simon Theater on Broadway; Clyde’s, directed by Kate Whoriskey at Second Stage Theater on Broadway; and an opera adaptation of her play Intimate Apparel composed by Ricky Ian Gordon and directed by Bart Sher, commissioned by the Met/Lincoln Center Theater.   

Her other work includes Floyd’s (retitled Clyde’s) (Guthrie Theater); the musical adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees, with music by Duncan Sheik and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead (the Almeida Theatre/the Atlantic Theater); Mlima’s Tale (Public Theater); By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (Lilly Award, Drama Desk Nomination; Second Stage/Signature Theater); Ruined (Pulitzer Prize, OBIE, Lucille Lortel, New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Audelco, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award; MTC/Goodman Theater); Intimate Apparel (American Theatre Critics and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for Best Play; Center Stage/SCR/ Roundabout Theater); Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine (OBIE Award; Playwrights Horizons/Signature Theater); Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por’knockers; and POOF!

—Bio excerpted from LynnNottage.com

It is remarkable to find a piece that highlights the unseen experiences within the broader fabric of history. Not just America’s imperialist incentives under the Roosevelt administration, but examination and inquiry into the life and efforts of a Barbadian building the Panama Canal to support another nation’s expansion; not just the motion and shifting politics of Progressive Era Manhattan, but the stories and music of a Tenderloin sex worker held in both the center and the outskirts of change; not just the Great Migration whose waves built cities, but those who came before, the lone refugee who forged a way to a new world without family or full pockets.

Because this is what Lynn Nottage does: brings light to the shadows and quilts together the pieces of the zeitgeist. Fashions futures from a forgotten past.

Much of the dramaturgy work for this show took the form of deep research and presentations on the political climate of the time. A glimpse into how people left out of history still lived day to day. From the pages of an 1862 cocktail guide on how to properly serve brandy punch to a party of 20, to the painstaking route a Panama laborer would have endured moving from the Caribbean to Ellis Island, to what transit fees for the 1905 trolley cars, carriages, or the novel subway of a daily commute must have been, to the unequal and many times unbearable conditions for people of color laboring toward a common goal—to better their lives, to connect vast oceans over land. These are just a few of the ways we hoped to help the cast and creative team pattern the world to which you now bear witness. But our dramaturgical work went past the page and the rehearsal stage to learning the nuances of the characters who now live beyond Nottage’s words. We facilitated a discussion with the cast and Rabbi Goldstein of the Chabad House on Orthodox Judaism and the devoutness of  belief; we sat in on table work to engage a conversation full of life based in memories from the past, and we hope to connect the performance stage to classrooms, to campus, to the community at large, and beyond. Because Nottage’s play deserves to be seen and heard. And, like a precious piece of lace, treasured.

For more information from the dramaturgy team, scan here:

Lynn Nottage wrote Intimate Apparel after finding an old photo of her seamstress great-grandmother who lived in New York City in the early 1900s. Knowing little about the life she must’ve led, she started doing research—only to discover the dearth of first-person accounts of the marginalized, immigrant, and under-represented populations of what was arguably the most diverse city in the world at that time. Clearly someone somewhere deemed their stories as not worthy of much documentation so their histories were largely ignored, overlooked, or erased. 

Because she found so few contemporary accounts, Ms. Nottage as she often has in her work, created a space to let the underrepresented speak for themselves. The result is the beautifully rich, warm, and fully realized world of 1905 New York that you’ll experience today. I hope that watching Esther, Mayme, Mr. Marks, and the others live their lives will remind you that there are many, many stories missing from our collective history and if it weren’t for the resilience of people like these characters, most of us wouldn’t be here in the theatre tonight.

Enjoy this gorgeous jewel of a play.

Judith Moreland, director

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