Meet Lynn Nottage

“I feel it’s my social responsibility to shine a light on areas that don’t get seen.” – Lynn Nottage

Biography

Born in 1964, Brooklyn based playwright Lynn Nottage established a relationship with both the art of narrating a story and political commitment – the two driving forces behind her work – early in life. Her grandmother, an extraordinary storyteller, and her mother, a political activist who participated in the Civil Rights and the Feminist movements, had a large impact on who Nottage is today: A politically engaged playwright.

After Nottage received a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale University School of Drama, she worked as a press officer for Amnesty International for four years until she started writing plays. Although her plays deal with very different subject matters and take place in different settings, they all have one similarity: In each of them we find a strong woman – a “Warrior Woman.”

Lynn Nottage’s official biography
MacArthur Fellows biography
Pulitzer Prize biography

Interviews and Articles

To gather background information for Ruined, Nottage travelled to Uganda, Kenya, Senegal, and the Gambia. For the May/June 2005 issue of the magazine American Theatre, she wrote an article about the experiences she made on her trip to Uganda where she met and interviewed refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan. Click here to read Lynn Nottage’s article “Out of East Africa”.

Based on an interview with Nottage, award-winning essayist Randy Gener published a follow-up article on the playwright’s experience in Africa. Woven into the report about Nottage’s trip into “that beautiful, complicated, turbulent, messy, verdant, tenacious continent” (Randy Gener) are background information on her biography and her other plays. Click here to read the article “Conjurer of Worlds”.

Shortly after Nottage received the MacArthur Foundation Award in the fall of 2007, she gave an interview about the impact the prize has on her life, her latest work Ruined (which had not made its stage debut by then) and her trips to Africa. Click her to read the interview.

Further interviews with Nottage can be found on her official website: http://lynnnottage.net/about.html

Other works by Lynn Nottage

A stone’s throw
“Inspired by Antigone, A Stone’s Throw examines a romantic African woman, who pays the ultimate price under Sharia law for allowing herself to fall in love with a married man.” (Lynn Nottage)

Fabulation, or the re-education of Undine
“Fabulation is a social satire about an ambitious and haughty African-American woman, Undine Barnes-Calles, whose husband suddenly disappears after embezzling all of her money. Pregnant and on the brink of social and financial ruin, Undine retreats to her childhood home in Brooklyn’s Walt Whitman projects, only to discover that she must cope with a crude new reality. Undine faces the challenge of transforming her setbacks into small victories in a battle to reaffirm her right to be. Fabulation is a comeuppance tale with a comic twist. ” (Lynn Nottage)
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Intimate Apparel
“In the early 1900s, a talented African-American designer creates intimate apparel for New York Society Ladies and Prostitutes alike. Her life becomes romantically intertwined with her clientele, challenging the sexual taboos of the age. ” (Lynn Nottage)
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Las Meninas
“The true story of the Seduction of Queen Marie Therese, and the consequences of her affair with Nabo, an African Servant of diminutive stature. The play is set in the court of Louis XIV. ” (Lynn Nottage)
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Mud, River, Stone
“An upper-middle class African American couple from New York embarks on a trip to Mother Africa on a quest to ‘find their roots.’ Along the way, a series of comic mishaps and a wrong turn on a muddy road lead to a frightening and revealing vacation they won’t soon forget. ” (Lynn Nottage)
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Por’ Knockers
“In New York City, a group of idealistic political activists stage a bold act of civil disobedience and must live with the devastating consequences.” (Lynn Nottage)
Click here to buy this book online as part of a collection of plays by Lynn Nottage from Barnes & Noble

Crumbs from the Table of Joy
“The battle for the heart and mind of 17-year-old Ernestine is waged in a living room in Brooklyn in 1950. The contestants include the lively and glamorous Aunt Lily, Ernestine’s God-fearing father and a mysterious German refugee. As is Ernestine, the country is on the brink of transition. This coming of age tale evokes the poetry of change.” (Lynn Nottage)
Click here to buy this book online from Barnes & Noble
Click here to buy this book online as part of a collection of plays by Lynn Nottage from Barnes & Noble
Click here to find the book in the DC public libraries

Poof!
“A housewife copes with life a few moments after her abusive husband spontaneously combusts, leaving a pile of ash on the kitchen floor.” (Lynn Nottage)
Click here to buy this book online as part of a collection of plays by Lynn Nottage from Barnes & Noble

All book descriptions are from Lynn Nottage's official site.

Awards

Nottage is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Ruined, the 2007 MacArthur Genius Award, an OBIE Award for playwriting, NY Drama Critics Circle Award, Best play and John Gassner Outer Critics Circle awards, American Theatre Critics/Steinberg 2004 New Play Award, 2004 Francesca Primus Award, and 2 AUDELCO awards.