A Concise Introduction to Lynn

Nottage

Contains moderate adult themes and

moderate sexual threat & violence

© Digital Theatre+ | Published: May 19, 2022

TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………..3
• ‘Lynn Nottage’ by Sandra Adell, Evjue Bascom Professor,
Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-
Madison…………………………………………………………………………………………………4
• Key Productions on Digital Theatre+…………………………………………………18
• Lynn Nottage in Theory & Practice…………………………………………………..20
• Discussion Questions…………………………………………………………………………26

A Concise Introduction to Lynn Nottage | Digital Theatre+ 2

INTRODUCTION
This is a comprehensive introduction to Lynn Nottage. This guide:

• Offers a biography of Lynn Nottage in an essay, followed by a list

of references, written by Sandra Adell.
• Includes guidance on other useful related resources on Digital
Theatre+ such as information on key productions, essays, and
interviews.
• Provides key materials useful for individual student-led research
and in-classroom discussions.

A Concise Introduction to Lynn Nottage | Digital Theatre+ 3

LYNN NOTTAGE
Sandra Adell

INTRODUCTION

A 2007 recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and two-time

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (Ruined, 2009; Sweat, 2017), Lynn
Nottage reached a milestone in her career during the 2021-22 Broadway
season. With two shows on Broadway — Clyde’s and MJ The Musical, for
which she wrote the libretto — and an opera adapted from her play
Intimate Apparel (2003) at New York’s Lincoln Center Theater to add to
her impressive list of accomplishments, Lynn Nottage is widely
recognized as one of the most prolific American playwrights of the 21st
century. Among her other published plays are Crumbs from the Table of
Joy (1995); Fabulation: Or the Re-Education of Undine (2004); By the
Way, Meet Vera Stark (2013); and Mlima’s Tale (2018).

HISTORY

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1964, Nottage grew up during the 1970s in
a brownstone in the working-class neighborhood of Boerum Hill. She
attributes her interest in the arts to her parents, whom she described in a
2021 New York Times Magazine interview as “strangely interesting
people.” Her mother was a public school teacher; her father, a
psychologist for the State of New York. They were both community
activists and strong supporters of the performing arts. After her father
was injured in an accident and could no longer work, her mother
became the family’s sole support. Seeing her mother work hard to
support the family inspired Nottage to develop a strong work ethic and
the empathy she shows for working class people in her plays.

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Nottage had her first success as a playwright while attending New
York’s Fiorello LaGuardia High School of Music and Art. The school,
which boasts a roster of many celebrity artists, was the inspiration for the
1980 hit movie Fame and its 2009 remake. Nottage submitted a play
titled The Dark Side of Verona to a national competition for young
playwrights and was one of four high school students selected for a
workshop on writing for musical theatre under the mentorship of Stephen
Sondheim. Despite this promising start, Nottage was not yet ready to
commit herself to writing for theatre. After winning a scholarship to
Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, Nottage enrolled briefly
into a pre-med program before switching to American literature and
creative writing. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in 1986 and a Masters
in Fine Arts in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama in
1989. Although she continued writing plays after graduating from Yale,
Nottage spent a few years working for Amnesty International, helping to
gather testimonies and interviews from women around the world who
were being denied their human rights. The skills she developed at
Amnesty International would become part of her creative process,
especially while working on her Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, Ruined
(2019) and Sweat (2015).

As an emerging playwright, Nottage frequently incorporated strong and

often comical critical commentary about issues of concern to her. For
example, in her one-act play Poof (1993), a woman and her neighbor try
to figure out how to get rid of the ashes of an abusive husband who
suddenly and mysteriously went up in smoke. Mud, River, Stone (1999)
presents an African American couple whose idealized African vacation
turns into a nightmare when they end up in an abandoned hotel during a
monsoon instead of the fancy resort that was advertised in a travel
magazine. Particularly in the first act of this two-act play, Nottage
creates scenes that humorously present the couple as totally
unprepared for the realities they confront while visiting a war-torn

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country, before turning toward tragedy. In Por’knockers (2004) Nottage
experiments with time and place. One of her more blatantly political and
didactic plays, Por’knockers shifts between a Guyana rainforest and a
dimly lit room in Brooklyn, USA, where a group of revolutionaries argue
endlessly about racism and oppression under capitalism. In the
rainforest, Lance, a Guyanese gold miner, frantically searches for gold in
the muddy forest riverbeds. Lance is a por’knocker; he spends his life in
the forest panning for the precious metal. The connection between
Lance and the revolutionaries is made when one of them, Kwami,
crosses into the mythic space of the forest to connect, at least in his
imagination, with the father who abandoned him long ago.

Las Meninas (Ladies-in-Waiting), stands out from Nottage’s other works

in terms of its historical background. Her other plays are set in the late
20th century and early 21st centuries; Las Meninas is set in 17th century
France. Inspired by the famous painting by Diego Velázquez, Las
Meninas is an elaborate costume drama. The play is based on rumors
about an intimate relationship between Queen Marie-Thérèse, wife of
King Louis XIV, and Nabo Sensugali, a Black dwarf she received as a
gift. The play opens with their presumed daughter, Louise Marie-
Thérèse, on the eve before she takes her vows. As an act of absolution
she announces to her invisible auditors — her sisters — that the story she
is about to tell is “the true story of the seduction of Marie-Thérèse . . . the
Queen of France” (Nottage, 2004, p.2). Louise Marie-Thérèse’s narrative
is interweaved with that of the Queen, who tells her own story of how
she became enamored with Nabo. Among the more comic scenes in this
play is the birth of Louise Marie-Thérèse. It is pure farce, an example of
Nottage’s range as a playwright who is better known for the seriousness
with which she treats the Black women who are at the center of most of
her works.

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The story of the Crump family in Crumbs from the Table of Joy, is told
mainly from the point of view of 17 year-old Ernestine. Often called a
'memory' play, it was commissioned for young audiences by New York’s
Second Stage Theatre. The play’s title, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, is
from 'Luck,' a short poem by Langston Hughes. As a coming-of-age
story, it offered casting opportunities for young African American women
at a time — the mid-1990s — when those opportunities were rare. Its
popularity, especially on college campuses, helped establish Lynn
Nottage’s reputation as an important new voice in American Theatre.

MAJOR WORKS

Lynn Nottage’s play Intimate Apparel brought her even greater acclaim.
Since its 2004 New York premiere at New York’s Roundabout Theatre
Company, Intimate Apparel has been produced in every major regional
theater across America. The play, which is set in New York City in 1905,
was inspired by a photo of her grandmother’s sister. She found it while
cleaning out her grandmother’s Boerum Hill brownstone where Nottage
still lives with her husband, the filmmaker Tony Gerber, and their
children. In a 2014 interview with theatre historian Jocelyn L. Buckner,
Nottage said that when she found the photo she realized that she “knew
nothing about this woman, other than she was a seamstress who came
to New York at the turn of the century. She was an incredibly resourceful
woman who managed to build a life.” (Buckner, 2016, p.181). That woman
comes to life in Intimate Apparel as Esther, a gifted but lonely
seamstress who creates beautiful lingerie for women. Although she can
neither read nor write, Esther is a shrewd business woman, especially
when it comes to fine fabrics. What stands out in this play’s otherwise
stark setting is beautiful fabric — the lingerie Esther creates for her
clients — and the bolts of fabric Mr. Marks shows her when she visits his
shop. Theirs is a special relationship, their mutual affection
communicated through their shared appreciation of Mr. Marks’ fine

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fabrics. Unable to bridge the cultural divide between them (Mr. Marks is
an Orthodox Jew) Esther accepts the marriage proposal of a stranger
from Panama and loses everything she had worked for. The play ends
as it begins, with Esther at her sewing machine making a beautiful piece
of lingerie. As the lights fade, a photo is projected of a Black woman.
The title reads, “Unidentified Negro Seamstress, ca. 1905.” (Buckner,
2016, p.74). In By The Way, Meet Vera Stark (2011), Lynn Nottage pays
homage to other ‘unidentified’ Black women. The women in this play
represent the actresses who filled in the backgrounds of major movies
during Hollywood’s Golden Age (between 1930 and the 1960s) as
slaves, nannies, and maids. They each perform versions of the
stereotyped characters demanded by the directors and producers who
controlled the studios. Throughout the first act, the women vie with each
other to gain the attention of the 'important director' who has been hired
to direct a movie titled The Belle of New Orleans. The comedy in Act 1
gives way to parody in Act 2 as a group of academics hold a colloquium
titled Rediscovering Vera Stark. The mock seriousness of the colloquium
blurs the lines between the real and the fictive, as does the website Lynn
Nottage created for the play. This play includes an interview with two
men who claimed to have been Vera Stark’s agent and friend. There
never was a Vera Stark. She is pure invention and the play offers comic
relief from the seriousness of some of Nottage's other plays.

Another comedy by Nottage is Fabulation or the Re-education of Undine

(2004). The title character, Undine, is on top of her world as a successful
Manhattan publicist. But it quickly falls apart after her handsome
Argentinian husband, Hervé, empties her bank accounts and runs off,
leaving her pregnant and destitute. In this fast-paced comedy, all the
actors — except the one playing Undine — play several characters. As
her life unravels, Undine encounters a couple of FBI agents, a Yoruba
Priest, a drug dealer, and a very impatient social worker at the local

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welfare office, among others, before coming to finally accept the family
she rejected in order to gain money and prestige.

Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined was commissioned by

Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, where it had its world premiere in the fall
of 2008. The play focuses on the lives of four Congolese women who
suffered extreme sexual violence during the decade-long civil war in the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in Central Africa. It is set in a bar in
a small mining town in the Ituri rainforest. Owned by Mama Nadi, herself
a victim of the systematic rapes that were inflicted on women throughout
the country, the bar is both a safe haven for the women and a place of
continued subjugation. In exchange for the relative safety provided by
Mama Nadi they must serve as prostitutes for her patrons, some of
whom carried out atrocious acts of sexual violence in their fight to gain
control of the coltan-rich mining regions. Coltan is the mineral used to
fuel our electronic devices. By placing these women at the center of her
narrative, Nottage challenges her audiences to think, not only about our
dependence on this precious mineral, but how the warring factions used
the bodies of Congolese women to terrorize entire communities and to
gain control of the mines. The play’s final dramatic scenes symbolize the
meaning of the name of the forest. Ituri means 'covered in blood'.

Lynn Nottage’s second Pulitzer Prize winner, Sweat, is the first of her
plays to receive a Broadway production. Sweat grew out of a series of
interviews she and her director, Kate Whoriskey, conducted with a
diverse group of residents in the economically depressed city of
Reading, Pennsylvania. Nottage chose to focus on Reading after coming
across a 2012 report that listed it as the poorest city of its size in the
country. Many of the people she met in Reading had worked for years in
a factory that had shut down, leaving them without any meaningful
employment. What they revealed to her was that the economic downturn
had fractured a once cohesive community. Sweat presents what Nottage

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has called the American story in the post-industrial era, one that is
playing out in manufacturing cities throughout the US.

LYNN NOTTAGE ON AND OFF-BROADWAY, 2021-22

The 2021-22 Broadway season marks a turning point in Broadway

Theatre history. Never before had so many plays by Black playwrights
been produced in a single season. For Lynn Nottage and others, it
marked a new era in American theatre, when the country’s main stages
will finally showcase its diversity. In a January 2022 interview for The
New York Times, Nottage expressed the joy she felt from having three
major works on New York stages in a single season. She said that part of
that joy came from working on three very different productions that took
her to three different spaces as an artist. Her play, Clyde’s, opened on
November 23, 2021, for a limited run at the Helen Hayes theater. MJ The
Musical opened at the Neil Simon Theatre on February 1, 2022 for an
extended run. Nottage’s first opera, an adaptation of Intimate Apparel,
opened off-Broadway at the Lincoln Center Mitzi Newhouse Theater.

Clyde’s had its world premiere in July 2019, at the Guthrie Theater in
Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was titled Floyd’s. Nottage changed the title
to Clyde’s after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 by a
Minneapolis policeman. Drawing from her research and interviews for
Sweat, Nottage set Clyde’s in a sandwich shop in Reading,
Pennsylvania. The title character is a tough-talking, no-nonsense, chain-
smoking employer of the formerly incarcerated. In this comedy, Clyde
never lets her four kitchen employees — Trisch, Raphael, Jason and
Montrellus — forget that they are ex-felons. When they are not rushing to
fill sandwich orders, they experiment with creating the perfect sandwich.
Things come to a head when a group of investors, interested in the shop,
arrives and one of them orders relish on a specialty sandwich that does
not come with relish. Despite Clyde's threats and bullying, each of the

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workers refuses to put relish on the sandwich. In an act of solidarity, they
each take off their aprons and exit, leaving Clyde alone in her kitchen
contemplating the tempting sandwich they left on the counter.

MJ The Musical has been described in reviews as a jukebox musical, but

the libretto Lynn Nottage wrote for it gives it much more depth. In
developing the story, Nottage wanted to focus on Michael Jackson’s
creative processes as he prepared for the 1992 Dangerous Tour, at the
time the biggest, most extensive tour ever undertaken by an entertainer.
It is a backstage story: the cast and crew are in the final days of
rehearsals for the tour. A film crew from MTV has been allowed in to film
the rehearsals and interview Michael. During breaks in the rehearsals,
the reporter prods him with questions about his relationship with his
family, especially his father. As he responds to or evades the reporter’s
questions, he watches younger versions of himself perform crucial
moments in his life that led him to becoming 'MJ'.

In a 2021 interview with scholar Salamishah Tillet at New York’s

Schomburg Center for Research, Nottage said that she can’t really think
of her “life without the music of Michael Jackson.” She called it the
“sound track” of her life. When asked by Salamishah Tillet how she
managed to work on three very different projects at the same time,
Nottage described herself as having a “nomadic” imagination. She
enjoys working in what she calls different spaces, that is, writing for
theatre, opera, and film. Some of her projects spent years in
development, which gave her time to work on other projects. For
example, the opera adaptation of Intimate Apparel opened off-
Broadway at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater in January, 2022,
nearly a decade after she and the composer Ricky Ian Gordon began
working on it. It took more than six years for Nottage and the creative
team for MJ to bring the musical to Broadway. When asked if she writes
her characters with a particular actor in mind, Nottage responded that

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when she was writing Intimate Apparel she “heard” the voice of Viola
Davis who originated the role of Esther. For Clyde’s she knew she
wanted Ron Cephas Jones to play the role of Montrellus and Uzo Aduba
as the title character, Clyde.

THEORY/PRACTICE

Lynn Nottage’s creative processes include extensive archival research.

Guided by social and political issues that are important to her, she is
often inspired by something she read or, as in the case of Intimate
Apparel, a photograph. An email from a close friend who had been out
of work for over six months is what motivated Nottage to explore, by
writing Sweat, what happens when people, who have worked all their
lives, suddenly find themselves unemployed and with nothing to fall
back on. Underneath the comedy in Clyde’s is a deeper issue regarding
the difficulty formerly incarcerated people have in finding employment.

Nottage’s motivation for Ruined was to bring into public awareness the
way rape was weaponized against women during the civil war in the
Democratic Republic of Congo. Nottage and her long-time collaborator,
the director Kate Whoriskey, interviewed women from the DRC during
their trips to Kampala, Uganda in 2004 and 2008 where they were in
exile. In an interview with theatre critic Randy Gener, Nottage explained
that she decided to write about them to bring public awareness to their
plight.

“I traveled to the region because I wanted to paint a three-

dimensional portrait of the women caught in the middle of armed
conflicts; I wanted to understand who they were beyond their status
as victims.” (Grener, 2021)

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The problem for audiences is that Ruined is grounded in the theatrical
traditions of Realism and Naturalism. It is therefore difficult not to see the
women as victims, considering the violence that was done to their
bodies. Nottage did not build her story from verbatim accounts of the
women’s stories, but rather used the interviews to create composite
characters.

In addition to the interviews with the women she met while in Uganda,
she studied the history of the region to better understand what was at
stake for both sides in this very bloody civil war. This was her first time
doing what she called ‘immersive’ research, that is, visiting a community,
listening to stories, and interviewing people. For MJ The Musical,
Nottage had access to a lot of people who knew Michael Jackson,
including dancers, choreographers, and singers. She asked them a lot of
questions to get at what she wanted — his creative processes.

At some point, all playwrights must enter into collaborations with others.
Without it, the work cannot exist on a stage. Nottage’s collaboration with
composer Ricky Ian Gordon, for the opera adaptation of Intimate
Apparel, came very early in the process. As she explained during her
interview with Salamishah Tillet, the libretto was written well in advance
of the music and went through several drafts. Throughout the process
she learned how to scale down the text to accommodate the music and
the voices of the performers. Likewise for MJ The Musical: the text must
accommodate the music, song, and dance. Other collaborations are
community-based. For example, shortly after the 2017 Broadway
production of Sweat, Nottage and her husband Tony Gerber, with whom
she co-founded Market Road Films, assembled a team of artists, poets,
and dancers to create The Reading Project, as a site-specific, interactive
and immersive tribute to the people of Reading, Pennsylvania. The group
transformed an abandoned building into a performance space and for
three weeks invited residents to experience the sorrow, joy, and hope of

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the city. But her greatest collaborators are the audiences who she hopes
will help support Black playwrights by going to the theater to see their
plays.

CRITICAL RESPONSES

Lynn Nottage’s plays are being produced in regional theaters across the
US, generating many published reviews from theatre critics, both positive
and negative. But they have yet to attract the attention of theatre
scholars and historians. There is currently only one collection of essays:
Jocelyn L. Buckner’s A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage. It includes
essays on Intimate Apparel, Crumbs from the Table of Joy and
Fabulation: Or the Re-education of Undine, and a special section of three
essays on Ruined, her most produced play after Intimate Apparel. As
Randy Gener explains in an essay for Critical Scenes titled 'On Lynn
Nottage’s Ruined', reviews were mixed. Although Nottage was widely
praised for bringing public awareness to the widespread sexual violence
that occurred during the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
critics also found fault with its structure, which too often was
misinterpreted as Brechtian, and with its attempts to lighten its tragic
weight with a love story. Nottage’s play, By The Way, Meet Vera Stark,
did not fare well with critics. Although most critics agreed that the play’s
first act was well-structured and quite funny, they didn’t see the humor in
the parody of an academic colloquium in the second act. For example,
Ben Brantley, in his review for The New York Times wrote, “The
convoluted academic theory is for the most part, flabby, and there is too
much of it.” Nottage’s comedy Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine
fared better with critics, although it is rarely produced. But after the
success of her most fully realized comedy, Clyde’s, audiences who are
familiar with her more somber and tragic plays, will see that Lynn
Nottage’s skills at writing comedy and satire have been there all along.

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REFERENCES

Nottage, L. (2003). Crumbs from the Table of Joy. New York: Theatre
Communication Group.

Nottage, L. (2004). Las Meninas. New York: Dramatists Play Service.

Nottage, L. (2006). Intimate Apparel/Fabulation. New York: Theatre

Communication Group.

Nottage, L. (2009). Ruined. New York: Theatre Communication Group.

Nottage, L. (2013). By The Way, Meet Vera Stark. New York: Theatre
Communication Group.

Nottage, L. (2017). Sweat. New York: Theatre Communication Group.

Nottage, L. (2022). Clyde’s. New York: Theatre Communication Group.

FURTHER READING

Brantley, B. (2011). A Black Actress Trying to Rise Above a Maid. [online]

The New York Times. Available at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/theater/reviews/by-the-way-meet-
vera-stark-at-second-stage-review.html?searchResultPosition=5
[Accessed 20 January 2022].

Buckner, J. L. ed. (2016). A Critical Companion the Lynn Nottage. London

and New York: Routledge.

Collins-Hughes, L. (2022). After ‘Clyde’s,' Lynn Nottage Just Has Two

Shows Onstage. ‘Whew!’ . [online] The New York Times. Available at:

A Concise Introduction to Lynn Nottage | Digital Theatre+ 15

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/17/theater/lynn-nottage-clydes-mj-
broadway.html [Accessed 17 January 2022].

Domius, S. (2021). Lynn Nottage. [online] The New York Times Style
Magazine. Available at:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/14/t-magazine/lynn-
nottage-theater-greats.html?auth=link-dismiss-google1tap [Accessed 20
January 2022].

Gener, R. (2010). “In Defense of ‘Ruined’”. American Theatre. Vol. 27 (8),

pp. 118-122. New York: American Theatre.

Gener, R. (2021). 'On Lynn Nottage’s Ruined.' Critical Stages/Scènes

Critiques. Vol. 3 (3). Available at: https://www.critical-stages.org/3/on-
lynn-nottages-ruined/ [Accessed 17 January 2022]

Nottage, S. (2021).Theatre Talks: Lynn Nottage in Conversation with

Salamishah Tillet. Interviewed by Salamishah Tillet. [video] The
Shomburg Center for Research. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urClwXdC2TY [Accessed 21
December 2021]

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KEY PRODUCTIONS ON DIGITAL THEATRE+
This section provides links to some key productions of Lynn Nottage.
These are followed by a list of other materials on Digital Theatre+ which
will be useful for considering these productions in a wider critical
context, and from the perspective of those who have been involved in
major stagings of their work. Quotations from the essay are included to
facilitate connections between the content and the critical writing.

From the essay:

“The story of the Crump family in Crumbs from the Table of Joy, is
told mainly from the point of view of seventeen-year-old Ernestine.
Often called a ’memory‘ play, it was commissioned for young
audiences by New York’s Second Stage Theatre.” (Adell, p.7)

Crumbs from the Table of Joy

• Produced by: L.A. Theatre Works

• Written by: Lynn Nottage
• Directed by: Seret Scott
• Theatre: L.A. Theatre Works
• 2009 production
• Run time: 01:47:37

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From the essay:

“Another comedy by Nottage is Fabulation or the Re-education of

Undine (2004). The title character, Undine, is on top of her world as
a successful Manhattan publicist. But it quickly falls apart after her
handsome Argentinean husband Hervé empties her bank accounts
and runs off, leaving her pregnant and destitute.” (Adell, p.8)

Fabulation or The Re-education of Undine

• Produced by: L.A. Theatre Works

• Written by: Lynn Nottage
• Directed by: Stuart K. Robinson
• Theatre: L.A. Theatre Works
• 2004 production
• Run time: 01:49:00

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 LYNN NOTTAGE IN THEORY & PRACTICE
Below is a list of further materials on Digital Theatre+ which explore the
work of Lynn Nottage. Quotations from the essay by Sandra Adell are
included to facilitate connections between the content and the critical
writing.

From the essay:

“The women in this play represent the actresses who filled in the
backgrounds of major movies during Hollywood’s Golden Age
(between 1930 and the 1960s) as slaves, nannies, and maids. They
each perform versions of the stereotyped characters demanded by
the directors and producers who controlled the studios.” (Adell, p.8)

Directors on Directing: An Introduction to the Craft

• Run time: 00:21:58

In this interview montage some of the most revered practitioners of the

20th and 21st centuries introduce the practice of directing. Contributions
come from around the world and include renowned directors such as
Peter Brook, Yaël Farber and Augusto Boal.

A Concise Introduction to Lynn Nottage | Digital Theatre+ 19

Eugenio Barba describes his process when working with text, Carrie
Cracknell and Michael Buffong consider working with actors on
developing characters, and Jatinder Verma explains the importance of
communicating with an audience on a visceral level.

From the essay:

“The problem for audiences is that Ruined is grounded in the

theatrical traditions of realism and naturalism. It is therefore difficult
not to see the women as victims considering the violence that was
done to their bodies. Nottage did not build her story from verbatim
accounts of the women’s stories, but rather used the interviews to
create composite characters.” (Adell, p.13)

Unlocking Realism and Naturalism

• Run time: 00:11:36

The Unlocked: Styles series offers a range of short, accessible e-

learning videos introducing theatrical styles. Each episode focuses on
key components and includes activities to check knowledge and extend
learning.

This episode introduces Realism and Naturalism and can be used

alongside the Teacher Notes and Student Workbook, comprising ready-
made activities and assessment strategies for learning key concepts and
vocabulary as well as how these styles have evolved.

From the essay:

“MJ The Musical has been described in reviews as a jukebox

musical, but the libretto Lynn Nottage wrote for it gives it much more

A Concise Introduction to Lynn Nottage | Digital Theatre+ 20

 depth. In developing the story, Nottage wanted to focus on Michael
Jackson’s creative processes as he prepared for the 1992
Dangerous Tour, at the time the biggest, most extensive tour ever
undertaken by an entertainer. It is a backstage story: the cast and
crew are in the final days of rehearsals for the tour.” (Adell, p.11)

Unlocking Musical Theatre

• Run time: 00:11:43

This episode introduces Musical Theatre and can be used alongside the
Teacher Notes and Student Workbook, comprising ready-made activities
and assessment strategies for learning key concepts and vocabulary as
well as its origins and performance.

From the essay:

“Las Meninas (Ladies in Waiting), stands out from Nottage’s other

work in terms of its historical background. Her other plays are set in
the late 20th and early 21st centuries; Las Meninas is set in 17th
century France. Inspired by the famous painting by Diego
Velázquez, Las Meninas is an elaborate costume drama.” (Adell,
p.6)

Key Concepts in Costume Design

• Run time: 00:12:42

The Key Concepts in Theater Design series offers a range of short,

authoritative and accessible e-learning videos to introduce students to
five theater design disciplines.

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This episode on costume design uses clips from The Railway Children to
explore Realism, Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird Trilogy as an
example of Surrealism, and Macbeth to demonstrate character
development through costume.

From the essay:

“In this fast-paced comedy, all the actors (except the one playing
Undine), play several characters. As her life unravels, Undine
encounters a couple of FBI agents, a Yoruba Priest, a drug dealer,
and a very impatient social worker at the local welfare office,
among others, before coming to finally accept the family she
rejected in order to gain money and prestige.” (Adell, p.8)

Unlocking Comedy

• Run time: 00:12:10

The Unlocked: Genres series offers a range of short, accessible e-

learning videos introducing theatrical genres. Each episode focuses on
key components and includes activities to check knowledge and extend
learning.

This episode introduces comedy, its origins, essential elements and

development over time. Exercises and assessment strategies are
included in the Student Workbook and Teacher Notes for use alongside
the video.

From the essay:

“In addition to the interviews with the women she met while in
Uganda, she studied the history of the region to better understand
what was at stake for both sides in this very bloody civil war. This

A Concise Introduction to Lynn Nottage | Digital Theatre+ 22

 was her first time doing what she called “immersive” research, that
is, visiting a community, listening to stories, and interviewing
people.” (Adell, p.13)

Immersive Theatre & Performance

DT Associate Lyn Gardner details the development of immersive theatre

and performance in the UK and its impact on the relationship between
the audience and performers. Gardner also considers how incorporating
technology into shows provides an opportunity to create new forms of
theatre and continues to reinvent the genre.

FURTHER CONCISE INTRODUCTIONS

Below are links to other concise introductions on the platform which

relate to key concepts and practitioners mentioned in this guide. They
provide more in-depth biographical and critical information, as well as
links to key productions and further resources available on Digital
Theatre+.

A Concise Introduction to Ensemble

Tom Cornford, Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at The Royal

Central School of Speech and Drama, details the history of the
ensemble in European and American theatre. Cornford considers how
the ensemble has stood for both aesthetic and political change in the
theatre, with reference to companies such as Joan Littlewood’s Theatre
Workshop, the Living Theatre and Complicité.

A Concise Introduction to Farce

Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama and Oratory at Tufts

University, introduces farce – a form of comedy usually associated with

A Concise Introduction to Lynn Nottage | Digital Theatre+ 23

physical action, exaggerated performance and crude language. Senelick
explores the evolution of farce in the West from its origins in carnival to
its influence on 19th-century vaudeville, and considers how it can be
viewed as a revenge of instincts and impulses over ethical precepts.

A Concise Introduction to Lynn Nottage | Digital Theatre+ 24

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1) How did Nottage’s time working for Amnesty International influence
her work?

2) Consider the extensive research behind Nottage’s plays Sweat and

Clyde’s. How does the research benefit the voice of the characters
within the plays?

3) What does Lynn Nottage consider to be 'immersive research'? How

does she use this for MJ The Musical and Ruined? Can you see the
different approaches and methods she focuses on?

4) Why do you think Nottage chose to use composite characters in

Ruined? Why do you think this is potentially controversial?

A Concise Introduction to Lynn Nottage | Digital Theatre+ 25