'Intimate Apparel' holds a special place in heart of Pulitzer-winning playwright Lynn Nottage
"Unabashedly romantic."
That's how playwright Lynn Nottage describes "Intimate Apparel," her 2003 drama about a lonely Black seamstress in 1905 Manhattan who falls in love with a Barbadian laborer, currently running at Northlight Theatre.
Partly inspired by Nottage's great-grandmother, and written shortly after her mother died, the play holds a special place in the writer's heart.
"It's a particular piece of work I imagined writing for her and her circle of friends, so I have a very special connection to it," said Nottage, a Pulitzer Prize winner for "Ruined" and "Sweat," who wrote the book for "MJ the musical," the Michael Jackson tuner that opened on Broadway in February.
She believes "Intimate Apparel" continues to resonate because it's about people searching for love and connection.
"Ultimately it is a love story," she said, "and that's one of the rarities in theater."
Someone once told Nottage it felt "old-fashioned." She says it's actually rather radical "because it's about something as dangerous as love and optimism, which you rarely see on the American stage."
"Intimate Apparel" has had "the most expansive life" of all her plays.
"Of all the plays I've written it feels the most indelible," she said.
Earlier this year, it received new life as an opera, premiering at New York City's Lincoln Center. Writing the libretto for Ricky Ian Gordon's score allowed Nottage to address some issues related to the character of George, the laborer who seamstress Esther writes to and eventually marries.
"I felt like I could go back and address those issues in the libretto and answer some of those questions that were nagging people," she said.
While she was working on the opera, Nottage also found she liked the way a bit of dialogue resolved and is considering making an adjustment in the play. She's done so before, mostly to update dated references. One such reference was to a Rolodex.
"Who knew that the Rolodex wouldn't be used forever?" she said, with a chuckle.
"One of the wonderful things about theater is that it's dynamic," she said, in that every revival is an opportunity to revisit the play.
"The words can actually be reinterpreted and re-imagined as they're processed through the bodies of the actors and interpreted by the directors and the designers," she said. "So in many ways, the work is rewritten over and over again even when the text is not."
She and her daughter, Ruby Aiyo Gerber, are at work on the libretto for another Gordon opera, which has been commissioned by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. In September, Goodman Theatre remounts her latest play, "Clyde's," which opened on Broadway last fall.
After all these years, revivals of her plays still give her a thrill.
"Often there's an ebb and flow to this," she said. "There will be years when 'Intimate Apparel' is not performed at all. Then, two years later, suddenly it's popping up again.
"It's always delightful when it's embraced by a new generation of theatergoers," she said.