Articles Tagged With: Lynn Nottage

Sweat at Greenbelt Arts Center

Reviews April 13, 2026 Rick Bergmann

Powerful Acting Carries Sweat at Greenbelt Arts Center

author: Rick Bergmann

We often imagine theater audiences as “predominantly white, affluent, middle-aged or older, and highly educated,” and the stories on stage as far removed from everyday struggle. Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, now playing at the Greenbelt Arts Center, dismantles that assumption. Centered on flawed, hard-working individuals clinging to the promise of the American Dream, the play lays bare how quickly that promise can unravel—and how easily anyone can break.

By The Way, Meet Vera Stark at Laurel Mill Playhouse

Reviews February 25, 2026 Rick Bergmann

author: Rick Bergmann

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark Balances Screwball Comedy and Sharp Cultural Reckoning

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage, now showing at Laurel Mill Playhouse, sets out to do a lot—and nearly pulls it off. First produced in 2011, the play examines the legacy of African Americans in Hollywood, skewering racial stereotypes while reveling in the conventions of classic cinema and theater.

Clyde’s at Spotlighters Theatre

Reviews June 18, 2025 Amanda N. Gunther

Smoky and zingy duck-egg salad, with chives, spread thick with pepperjack cheese, thick-cut heirloom-beefsteak tomato slice, and spicy brown mustard on a crispy baguette brushed with red pepper flake and chili oil. Mm. The first bite should be an invitation you can’t refuse. Spotlighters Theatre closes out their 62nd Season with that sumptuous first bite— Clyde’s by Lynn Nottage— and it’s as delicious as the advertisements have been leading everyone to believe. Directed by Rikki Howie Lacewell,

Clyde’s at Maryland Ensemble Theatre

Reviews May 17, 2025 Amanda N. Gunther

You never what you’re going to do when you meet the devil at the crossroads. Offer him a sandwich maybe? But does the perfect sandwich exist? Can it be created? A spicy egg salad with avocado-mayo and Greek-yogurt, with a garlic-zaatar aioli, fresh crisp romaine lettuce, sharp and pungent Manchego cheese, the ripest, firmest tomato, and fresh basil leaves on a toasted thyme and olive ciabatta. With a fresh parsley garnish on top. Pickle on the side.

Intimate Apparel at Compass Rose Theater

Reviews September 14, 2024 Amanda N. Gunther

“Don’t you let no man have no part of your heart without getting a piece of his.” Profound words and life lessons to live by from Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel, which is now appearing on stage at Compass Rose Theater at the top of the 2024/2025 season. Directed by Lottie E. Porch, this vibrant period drama, set in Lower Manhattan in 1905, is a heartfelt tale of Esther, a colored woman who stitches intimate apparel to make her living and all of the subsequent trials and tribulations that accompany that lifestyle at that time.

Intimate Apparel at Maryland Ensemble Theatre

Reviews February 13, 2024 Jamie & Ashley Gerhardt

Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel has local origins; originally a co-production between Baltimore’s Center Stage and California’s South Coast Repertory in 2003, it went on to a 3-month Off-Broadway run starring Viola Davis. The material also has a direct link to Nottage’s family history and was inspired by her great-grandmother’s life as a seamstress in the early 1900’s. Nottage found that the narrative and stories of black women in the early 1900’s were largely absent by researching her great-grandmother’s life.

(L to R) Cheryl Thompson as Cynthia, Brian Binney as Stan, Rose Talbot as Jessie, and Pamela Northrup as Tracey in Sweat. ????2nd Star Productions

Sweat at 2nd Star Productions

Reviews August 24, 2022 Amanda N. Gunther

Nostalgia is a disease. Sounds bitter and jaded, right? Or maybe it’s a lens of reality that should be more closely examined— lingering too long in the past can make it difficult to progress into the future. 2nd Star Productions, in shared residence at Bowie Playhouse, is currently producing Sweat, written by the Pulitzer-prize-winning playwright, Lynn Nottage. Directed by Miss Cody Jones, the play itself is a powerful social commentary about classism,

Randi Seepersad (left) as Mayme and Takira Thompson (right) as Esther in Intimate Apparel.

Intimate Apparel at Dundalk Community Theatre

Reviews March 5, 2022 Amanda N. Gunther

People do a lot of things they don’t ever speak of. And for a lot of different reasons. If you look at all the different little things people do, the threads of their lives, really— don’t they all come together like a fancy garment? Perhaps a little like a secretive glance into their private life? A little bit like a peak at their Intimate Apparel? Returning to live, in-person theatre, Dundalk Community Theatre brings Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel to the stage under the direction of Tom Colonna,

Sweat at Spotlighters Theatre

Reviews September 16, 2019 Mike Zellhofer

As Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) said in
Point Break, “It will sting a bit,
but, uh, it’s for your own growth, bro.” Sweat
written by Lynn Nottage, playing at Spotlighters Theatre, is the slap in the
face that we need. It does what we all too often fail to do when it comes to a
political or social issue; it humanizes the situation. We read the paper, watch
the news, scan social media,

Sweat at Maryland Ensemble Theatre

Reviews September 7, 2019 Amanda N. Gunther

Skilled labor isn’t cheap; cheap labor isn’t skilled. An innocuous
enough statement of truth that might just ruffle the feathers of the pleasantly
situated. But isn’t that art and theater at its core? Comfort the disturbed and
disturb the comfortable? No surprises that politically charged, prescient and
topically relevant drama by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage
is being produced upon the Maryland Ensemble Theatre stage. Directed by Gené
Fouché, this ensemble-driven drama is laced with humor around the visceral edges
of political upheaval in the town of Reading,

Intimate Apparel at Silver Spring Stage

Reviews July 3, 2019 Claudia Bach

Lynn Nottage’s play, Intimate
Apparel, tells the story of one woman desperately reaching out for real,
unguarded, intimate human connection, and it is fitting that Silver Spring
Stage, with its intimate and engaging black box and overall style, should
select this piece to conclude its 2018-2019 season. Directed by SSS Board Chair
Seth Ghitelman, this emotion-driven production provided an entertaining and
thoughtful experience.

Amanda N. Gunther | TheatreBloom

The play,

Sweat at Everyman Theatre

Reviews October 31, 2018 Amanda N. Gunther

A couple of minutes is all it takes; your life can change just like that. In these unsettling and disturbing times of political unrest and social unease with humanity caught dangling in the balance between civility and annihilation, it is no surprise that Everyman Theatre is once more producing two time Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Lynn Nottage. This time it’s her core-shaking production of Sweat, Directed by the company’s Artistic Director, Vincent M.

Review: Ruined at Everyman Theatre

Reviews February 9, 2015 Amanda N. Gunther

The door never closes at Mama’s Place. Everyman Theatre is holding that door wide open as the 2015 New Year starts. Entering the back end of their 2014/2015 with Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, Everyman brings to the stage the harrowing and haunting tale of life in a small town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where civil war is eminent, every man is danger, and the palm wine and the dancing are the only things that chase away the horrors of reality.