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Lynn Nottage (born November 2, 1964) is an American playwright whose work often focuses on the experience of working-class people, particularly those 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 twice.

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 a 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 has a younger brother, who became an attorney. She grew up in Brooklyn's Boerum Hill neighborhood, and attended Saint Ann's School for her elementary education, before graduating 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.

Nottage attended Brown University (A.B., 1986) and the Yale School of Drama (M.F.A., 1989). After graduation, she worked in Amnesty International's press office for four years. More recently, Nottage has received honorary degrees from Brown (D.F.A., 2011), the Juilliard School and Albright College.

Nottage is married to filmmaker Tony Gerber, with whom she has two children, Ruby Aiyo and Melkamu Gerber. After living in Manhattan at the start of her career, Nottage returned to Brooklyn in 1997, moving back to the same Boerum Hill house in which she was raised.

Career

Nottage's plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world.

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 narrative spanning seventy years, following the life of Vera Stark, a determined African-American maid and aspiring actress, and her complex relationship with her boss, a white Hollywood star struggling to maintain her career. When both women secure roles in the same Southern film, the behind-the-scenes story leaves Vera with a legacy that sparks both surprise and controversy.

It premiered Off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre on May 9, 2011, with direction by Jo Bonney. The play is a "funny and irreverent look at racial stereotypes in Hollywood." The play was nominated for the 2012 Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Play. The play ran at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles in September 2012, starring Sanaa Lathan, who played the role of the maid who becomes a stage star.

Sweat

Sweat tells the story of a group of friends who have spent their lives sharing drinks, secrets, and laughs while working together on the factory floor. But when layoffs and picket lines begin to chip away at their trust, the friends find themselves pitted against each other in a heart-wrenching fight to stay afloat.