HOWARD UNIVERSITY

The Shapes of Her Pen: Ambiguity, Aesthetics,

Narration,
 
 


   

A Dissertation
Submitted to the Faculty of the
Graduate School

of

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HOWARD UNIVERSITY

in partial fulfillment of
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the requirements for the
degree of
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DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
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Department of English

by

Shayla M. Atkins

Washington, D.C.
May 2016
 Pro Q ue st Num b e r: 10158518

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a no te will ind ic a te the d e le tio n.

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 HOWARD UNIVERSITY

GRADUATE SCHOOL
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

DISSERTATION COMMITTEE

__________________________________
Sandra G. Shannon, Ph.D.
Chairperson

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__________________________________
Shauna Kirlew, Ph.D.

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__________________________________
Valethia Watkins, Ph.D.
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__________________________________
Dana A. Williams, Ph.D.
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__________________________________
Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance
Studies
University of Maryland

_______________________________
Dana A. Williams, Ph.D.
Dissertation Advisor

Candidate: Shayla M. Atkins

Date of Defense: April 22, 2016

ii
 DEDICATION

To my family: Blood, Spiritual, Adopted

For the many ways we are different and alike,
You are my inspiration.

To my (and all) students:

You are the best audience a professor can have,
You are my motivation.

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iii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, thank you Jesus. I want to thank God, my heavenly father, strength,

confidante, willing ear, and greatest jokester. I never would have imagined when I first said I

wanted to quit teaching middle school to teach college that my path would have led me here. I

know it is by the grace and strength of God that I have made it to this point and still have further

to go. After all, the Lord has equipped me with and positioned me to access spaces that I

otherwise would not have accessed. Therefore, I thank those whom God has placed in my life to

bring about the culmination of this journey in the form of this dissertation.

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I would like to thank Drs. Dana A. Williams, Sandra G. Shannon, Shauna Morgan

Kirlew, and Valethia Watkins for their time, attention, and dedication to this project. Your
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willingness to question, (re)direct, coach, encourage, and guide me as I birthed the largest baby I

hope to ever have (it is truly my first born child) has not gone unappreciated. I am sure I cannot
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begin to fathom what is necessary to help an aspiring scholar find her voice in the ocean of

scholarly voices. You all have taught me what revision means. I would be remiss not to thank
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two of my committee members specifically. To Dr. Shannon, when I first came to Howard and

stopped

         
     
    come see

                           

to Lynn Nottage with an invitation and opened the door and my mind to so much more than I had

anticipated. This project definitely could not have happened without you. To Dr. Williams, from

the beginning of my time at Howard, you have pushed me to interrogate and rethink my ideas

and the work I come across and never to accept anything as it is. You pushed me past boundaries

and limits I placed in front of myself (sometimes unconsciously), demanding nothing less than

my best and genuine effort           either and was content to settle for

iv
less. Time and again, you have made me rise to the occasion through the goals and standards you

set for me. Only now do I realize that you kept raising the bar higher each time. Thank you. Dr.

DeGout, although you were not officially on my committee, your guidance and feedback in the

early stages of my dissertation helped tremendously. The writing group is truly a space that

allowed for so much of my critical thinking about and evaluation of my own writing. Thank you

for your wisdom and critical eye.

I would also like to thank Professors Kimberly Bey, Dr. Eric Ruffin, and Raymond

  
   
  
      
  
 
    
 
   
 
   
  
  

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of the Fabulation production, insight on the Black and Brechtian aesthetic of the play and
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Intimate Apparel, and for the discussion on directorial licensing and production processes as I

worked on the third chapter. Additionally, I would like to thank Eve Muson from University of
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Maryland, Baltimore County for your assistance with accessing and viewing the production

recording of Las Meninas
 
 
 
 
  
  

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framing and my examination of them key to considering the plays as both literary and

performative works.

To my students, you all were and are awesome young adults with great minds, and I am

excited for the contributions you will make to your communities, small and large. My hybrid

African American literature class, especially, provided the best testing ground for conversations

and critical inquiries to begin thinking about some of these plays and African American literature

that I am always discussing. Your honest insight and curiosity helped shape some of the

(changed) approaches and ways that I consider this work and the work that I do in general.

Gevon Taylor, Garrett Tracey, Dominique James, Ashli Stephens, Octavia Gould, and Danasia

v
Jenkins. I cannot wait to see where you all go. Continue setting and surpassing your goals, and

the doors will continue to open. To my fellow English grads and the Writing Center crew. You

all are the best therapists ever. Thank you for the many free sessions and letting me harass you

during these last few years, especially near the end. You all can and will do this.

Ms. Hardy. Ms. Tanya Hardy (I want to be sure people know exactly whom I am

referencing.) You are a Godsend and truly are a blessing to each and every young and hopeful

mind that enters your office. You are the best and are completely and totally irreplaceable. I

cannot imagine my time at Howard without you. From the hilarious emails to the rides home to

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the meals and checkups over these last six years, you have managed to care for my mind and

spirit in ways that helped more th
 
    
 



  
  

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And well, you are. Thank you for all that you have done and continue

to do by mere fact that you see us students and care.

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To Kendra, girl, you left me by my lonesome to occupy the chairs of 248 and laugh

      
     

   s      

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office. But, your critical and insightful feedback throughout this project (and before this project

really) in all of its various iterations and the ideas that continue to live on in Google Drive or a

binder or email have made this project more tolerable and manageable. It is not often when you

  
       
 
        e one of

the few. You cheered me on through your questions and steered me in directions I had not

considered, and you are the best conference getaway partner-in-crime to have.

Daddy, Mommy, Quan, and Bran, you have prayed for and encouraged me. You have

given me wake up calls and walked with me through this every step of the way. Thank you for

the love and sacrifices you have made so that I could pursue this dream. Give me a month to

vi
acclimate to the real world. Ms. Geneva, Mr. Wallis, Aunt Brenda, and Uncle James, you all

have provided insight, prayers, food, and encouragement on graduate school focus. You have

been great places for responsible reprieves, feeding me and checking on me as I worked. To my

awesome best friend April, you, my dear, are forever and always the Kim Possible to my Ron

Stoppable and Rufus, the Penny to my Zoey. We have grown together since sixth grade and no

distance has ever been too far. You have cheered me on, checked me, and always been real, even

when I think you are a softie to others. Thank you for being the wonderful person you have

become and being an awesome role model. Maybe now I can start being a big girl and get on

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your level. I love you girl. Wallis, my best friend, colleague, nurse, prayer warrior, personal chef,

study partner, and chauffeur. What can I say other than thank you for being you and for being
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there? Thank you for your prayers and diligence in seeking God first in general and as we

walked this journey. You have offered suggestions and direction on ways to make this graduate
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process and dissertation experience more navigable, constantly encouraging and reminding me of

 
 my promise, and my dream even when I wanted to throw in the towel. The four
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and I are jumping and screaming you to the finish line. I love you all.

Ending where I started, I thank God. Without that favor, unceasing hand, and covering, I

would not be here or have completed this project because only the Lord truly knows of all the

times I was ready to give up and the unknown obstacles I faced. Without God, I would not have

the fortitude, desire, and need to pursue this degree and get it. The angels and blessings placed in

my life over these last six years are innumerable. As I prepare for the next phase of my life, I go

fully aware of the calling on my life, and rest knowing the Lord has been, continues to be, and

forever will be with me. So, Lord, as frightening yet comforting as it always has been, le 
. I
  

vii
 ABSTRACT

This dissertation is structured as a suite of essay

  
 

 

published playsRuined; Intimate Apparel; Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine; Las

Meninas; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark; Crumbs from the Table of Joy, , and Mud,

River, Stone. Each chapter engages various issues the plays raise about instability, identity, and

ideology and uses different theoretical frameworks to introduce the novice Nottage scholar and

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use multiple theses in each chapter. Chapter two, Between the Cracks: Grey Areas in Lynn



 
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Ruined, examines the ambiguities of Ruined as critiques on the uncertain realities for

citizens of war. Chapter three, Behind the Staged Lines: Brechtian and Black Aesthetics in Lynn
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  Intimate Apparel and Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine, evaluates the quest

for self-fulfillment when battling social standards in Intimate Apparel and Fabulation, or the Re-
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Education of Undine. Chapter four, Framing Histories: Where Plots and Discourse Meet in


  

  Las Meninas and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, &%
  
 

construction of history-making in By the Way, Meet Vera Stark and Las Meninas. Chapter five,

Rejecting Connections: Spirituality, Politics, and Identity in Crumbs from the Table of Joy,

, and Mud, River, Stone, interrogates spiritual, political, and cultural ideological

subscription costs in , Crumbs from the Table of Joy, and Mud, River, Stone.

viii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

DISSERTATION COMMITTEE ............................................................................................... ii

DEDICATION.............................................................................................................................. iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ iv

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................ viii

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCING THE SHAPES OF HER PEN: AN ALTERNATE

APPROACH; OR, A SUITE OF ESSAYS ................................................................................. 2

The Early (Middle) Years ................................................................................................ 11

The Turn-of-the-Century Plays ......................................................................................... 13

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The Pulitzer and On .......................................................................................................... 16

CHAPTER 2. BETWEEN THE CRACKS:
 
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RUINED ....................................................................................................................................... 24

CHAPTER 3. BEHIND THE STAGED LINES: BRECHTIAN AND BLACK

          INTIMATE APPAREL AND FABULATION, OR
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THE RE-EDUCATION OF UNDINE ........................................................................................ 75

Epic Stages of Time and Space in Intimate Apparel ........................................................ 79

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Light It Up, Sound Off: Blending Aesthetics in Epic Proportions in Fabulation ............ 97

CHAPTER 4. FRAMING HISTORIES: WHERE PLOTS AND DISCOURSE MEET IN



       LAS MENINAS AND BY THE WAY, MEET VERA
STARK ........................................................................................................................................ 116

    ! "#   Las Meninas .......................... 120
A Discursive Historical Aside: The Celebrity of and in By the Way, Meet Vera Stark.. 137

CHAPTER 5. REJECTING CONNECTIONS: SPIRITUALITY, POLITICS, AND

IDENTITY IN CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY, $%&'()%*(+&,, AND MUD,
RIVER, STONE ......................................................................................................................... 154

From Death to Life: Religiosity in Crumbs from the Table of Joy ................................. 155

Politicking for the Community in -./012.345/6 ............................................................ 167

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 An Army of One: Cultural Imperialism in Mud, River, Stone ........................................ 185

CHAPTER 6. ENDLESS INK: OPPORTUNITIES TO MOVE BEYOND THE TEXT

AND STAGE ............................................................................................................................. 200

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 210

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 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCING THE SHAPES OF HER PEN:
AN ALTERNATE APPROACH; OR, A SUITE OF ESSAYS

In the fourteen plays she has written, produced or workshopped, and published, Lynn

Nottage uses varying perspectives and settings to defamiliarize stories with which we are all

familiar in some way and to bring them to the stage with fresh insight. Spanning a little more

than two decades, each play Poof! (1993),
  (1994), Crumbs from the Table of Joy

(1995), Mud, River, Stone (1996), Las Meninas (2002), Becoming American (2003), Intimate

Apparel (2003), Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (2004), Give, Again? (2007), A

   (2009), Ruined (2009), By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2011), One More River to

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Cross: A Verbatim Fugue (2015), and Sweat (produced 2015 but not yet published) tackles a

different issue, employs a different method, serves a different purpose, and evidences a different
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style.1 D            !"# $%
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noting that all attempts to classify her as a specific type of playwright fail. Her range, her variety

is her gift. This reality, however, makes it difficult for literary scholars to write about her full

oeuvre since contemporary scholarship in the field tends to privilege authors whose works fit
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into neat categories. This is all the more true for literary scholars and their work on playwrights

and then again for the first single-author book on a major author. Some playwrights like Suzan

1
Jane T. Peterson and Suzanne Bennet explain that Nottage has written, produced or

&'( )*+, ,-- .,

workshopped other plays, but she has not published them. They include Rhinestones and Paste
(1987), Brooklyn after the Glow (written between 1987 and 1993),

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Inlaws? (written between 1987 and 1993), Parenthetical Glance at the Dialectical Nature of the

4 ,  45 ,
(1988), Ida Mae Cole (1989), Inspite of the Revolution

67  8 9:;<= !"# >% ?@ A  B CD 
(1990), (1992), and Ida Mae Cole Takes a Stance (1992). She has also written a

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film script Table Stakes

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autobiographical narrative about an encounter with a writing teacher whose racist assumptions

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Lori-Parks or August Wilson have articulated in interviews and elsewhere clear agendas for their

playwrighting aesthetic, thereby outlining logical approaches to scholarship on their work.

When I began this project on Nottage, I made a similar attempt to identify a specific,

albeit narrow, Nottage aesthetic for her full corpus. I was determined to use this dissertation to

do things like map themes in the plays, examine the performance elements in certain plays and

the outcomes of these elements, identify artistic and social influences on her work, and to

identify the methods she uses to enliven traditional theatre devices in her contemporary plays.

Ultimately, I decided to take an alternate approach to this dissertation, to forego the traditional

single-thesis dissertation as monograph that is standard f
  

   Instead, I

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opted to take risks much like Nottage does as a playwright as I examine eight of her published
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and produced plays.2 Accordingly, this dissertation is offered as a suite of essays, each with its

own thesis rather than as a project with a single argument that is developed throughout all
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chapters. In so doing, I am contributing to the growing critical scholarship on Nottage and her

work and laying the groundwork for future scholarship related thereunto.
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In 2010, Sidonie Smith, in her role as president of the Modern Languages Association,

introduced the idea of the dissertation as a suite of essays. She argued that the latter, when done

    le alternative to the protomonog
 Smith       
cisely

structured, persuasively argued, elegantly written, at once lean in purpose and compelling in the


   This approach is one that theatre scholars employ in dissertations and books

as the breadth of a playwright s works often resist a singular focus, providing fruitful scholarship

2
I limit my study to eight of                Sweat, and I
wanted to focus on the published text of the works even when comparing them to other plays and
productions. The other five plays were workshopped but not produced beyond extremely limited
runnings like  !"#$%& '()"*, which is a scene within #!+,"#$%& -)".$/!, once in New York
and at CenterStage; thus, these plays have generated no criticism in theatre or literary studies.
3
opportunities. In English, however, this varied framing is less typical as critics seek a focused

lens through which to read the works and to create an angle through which to enter the discourse

on the author. As drama straddles two fields, dramatic
  
    literary

     and creation of scholarship on playwrights. Therefore, a suite approach
to the dissertation, I contend, privileges the work of the author and the text over a research

agenda that might be limited by a singular focus. This is not to suggest that the dissertation is

without focus. Rather, I  
       
    use multiple theses to engage
various issues such as instability, identity, and ideology that recur in the plays and use different

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theoretical frameworks to do so. I also conduct, in the introduction, a thorough literature review

and offer a comprehensive overview of her plays. My goal here is to introduce the novice
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Nottage scholar and to reorient the more advanced scholar to her work, encouraging careful

 

 
  
 
             

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conversation with one another and with other plays.

Though there is growing scholarship on Nottage, literary and theatre scholars tend to

  
  
     

   


 

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resists neat structuralist groupings; each play introduces a completely isolated set of

              
   
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remains absent. Where cataloging by definitive framings is the approach scholars use most to

determine developing and established aesthetics and styles in literary studies, Nottage manages

4

        
    
     

 

corpus-focused scholarship.

The breadth of topics Nottage engages in her plays has enabled scholars to explore many

subjects and build from the dearth of Nottage scholarship. Shannon identifies several recurring

themes that are prevalent in some of the plays  
 
 
  discovering

silencing between the lines; black women defining themselves; race, multiculturalism, and

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black women in Fabulation,      $
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stereotype as a trickster technique, one can evaluate the rhetorical strategies Nottage employs to
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maintain and debunk the very things her characters appear to support. In addition to

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women to support one another and to move beyond the racial constructs that cause disunity.

Extending the notions of community that Hayes addresses, Phyllisa Deroze approaches

community in Ruined and Poof! 


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healing. Entering the conversation on Nottage that these scholars have begun, I expand

scholarship on Nottage by exploring how she frames her plays in varying ways to reflect the

diversity of 
  voices and experiences about whom  4  $
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one to encounter the issues with an awareness that the stories will not unfold in the same way or

5
be the same. Her plays range from seventeenth century France to twenty-first century America.

The experiences in her works move from Africa to Europe to North America and include black

African, European, Caribbean, and American peoples, all the while engaging with traditional

aesthetics and creating new ones and reinscribing and undermining accepted ideologies.

Nottage has been writing, producing, and publishing plays for twenty-nine years, and in

these years, she has left and is leaving an indelible mark on theatre. Her rising critical reception

places her among a small cadre of black women playwrights who have gained significant, critical

attention from theatres and theatre critics alike. Joining a long legacy of women playwrights,

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Nottage is altering the ways audiences and readers engage the issues she brings to bear. 3


one of the most respected and most produced African American female playwrights of the

twenty-    
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status. In fact, Nottage herself notes her changed status when she explains that she had been
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that reflect the human condition that critics assert are what makes a work notable. Although her

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Though there are and have been many black women playwrights dating back to Angelina Weld
Grimké, Nottage is part of a small group of black women playwrights whose works have
garnered the critical attention of white critics and scholars as well, even placing her in
conversation with other American women playwrights. I make this distinction because although
black scholars are increasingly writing about black women playwrights, white scholars remain
focused on a small group of these same playwrights, and Nottage, like Lorraine Hansberry and
Parks, is among them.

4
I realize the problematic nature of my use of the term universal. I use it to situate Nottage as
white scholars and critics are reading her: with an assumption that her works reflect a normative
experience. Their employment of the term (and therefore characterization of her works),
6
winning play Ruined
    

 
  
    
 
  

and triggered the growing critical reception of her work. Of the 82 Pulitzer in Drama recipients

since 1917  Pulitzer   

, Nottage is one of fifteen women to receive the award and

the second black women to win following Suzan Lori-
    

 

Topdog/Underdog. Although each of these fifteen women playwrights addresses different issues,

their plays tend to focus on topics affecting women and are consistently identified and compared

  
   
 
 
   
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Ruined and Sweat. Ruined  


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Children (1939), and Kenerly suggests Sweat     
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however, is fraught with problematic assumptions, as they do not consider other cultures or
groups beyond the white American, patriarchal, heteronormative structures of hegemonic
ideology, even if considering a feminist perspective. Although I suggest there are kernels of
humanistic universality in some of her works, I am leery of asserting that the dynamic
relationships and issues she explores are applicable to and indicative of all people and cultures. I
discuss later in more depth this universal tension critics impose on the work and the ways it fails.
7
them so deliberately to these works and not moving beyond what is tantamount to an anxiety of

influence reading of Nottage and her works is disturbingly limiting. I explore such limitations

and move beyond them in the chapters that follow.

While
 The Pulitzer Plays: The First Fifty Years, 1917-1967 focuses on the

first fifty years of the Pulitzer and the first four women winners, Carolyn Craig examines all

eleven women winners before Nottage and puts them in conversation with one another,

examining how the playwrights tell the story of women and their history in America. Grouping

two to three women together, she evaluates how their corpus of work and Pulitzer plays

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contributed to the American stage. Suzan-Lori Parks, however, is the only playwright with three

dedicated chapters two on her and one on black women playwrights in general. Though

evaluating Parks and Topdog/Underdog in   

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of the additional chapter on black women contextualizes Parks and catalogs the playwrights and
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contemporary    
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notes how playwrights like Paula Vogel have worked with one another, influenced, and

promoted each other. Thus, Craig introduces Kia Corthron, Lynn Nottage, and Cheryl West as

part of        !    
 
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#$%& '())* +  Brooklyn after the Glow and Poof! are two such plays Craig posits take

up social responsibility as the former play deals with unconsidered social dangers for the

homeless, and the latter play addresses domestic abuse. Six years after Poof! was produced,

Nottage won the Pulitzer for Ruined
 
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plays focus on American life (Firestone xiii, !Pulitzer /
01 2 "), thereby making her play,

which is set in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), stand out all the more.

8

    
 
    
   
   
 
includes the diaspora and the immigrant. Randy Gener posits that Ruined   

have been indicative of a shifting climate that was still riding the high waves of President Barack

       
       
  
    

Kenyan and thereby denoting a new trend in recognizing the American experience as different


       
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longer simply U.S. based but increasingly global and multicultural. Like Ruined,


      
 
 
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herself in theatre, and the influence and reach of her works continue to ripple effects across

theatre and literary fields.

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One need only look at the theatre reviews and criticism to understand the growing and
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longstanding presence of, fascination with, and appreciation of Nottage and her works and the

growing scholarship on them. Theatre critics generally review her works positively. In her early

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have noted a perceived improvement in her storytelling. Scholars have characterized her later


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they bring her characters and their narratives to life (Kenerly).

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543). In fact, Nottage was the most produced black woman playwright during the 2005-2006

season (543). In the Washington, DC Metro area alone, eight theatres since the 2013-2014

  
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- and off-

Broadway success, been produced internationally and nationally, and experienced production

resurgences, it is safe to assume that scholarship on Nottage and her plays will follow the trend

of her popularity and will continue to grow in number and deepen in quality. Nottage 

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theatre and literary fields.
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As the critical attention in theatre continues to grow, the literary critic will find a void in

scholarship but ample material to evaluate and begin more robust conversations on Nottage. She
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maintains an aesthetic that one cannot neatly define, but she remains clearly prolific and is

increasin      
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conversation at this moment        expanding oeuvre enables one to employ
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various lenses to examine her literary contributions beyond the stage. What follows, then, is a

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10
 The Early (Middle) Years 5

The early plays situate Nottage as a playwright who is conscious of the layered African

American experiences and who is committed to bringing these issues to the stage. In the first

play Poof!, Nottage tackles domestic abuse in the black community and the power the abused

have to end their abuse. After years of remaining silent and accepting the abuse from her

husband Samuel, Loureen, in a fit of frustration, curses him, and he spontaneously combusts,

turning into a pile of ashes. As Loureen and her friend Florence try to come to terms with what

Loureen has done and to determine her next course of action, Loureen finds an inner strength

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that she did not realize she possessed. She embraces her freedom and the power of her voice.

 
  

  

    
 


 



 

  

  
  
 

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a stand on her own behalf. Using the

fantastical method of spontaneous combustion, Nottage brings to the forefront spousal abuse,
EV
associative abuse (both women, who are friends and neighbors, are abused), black women and

the law, and more importantly, the necessity for the victim to act and the significance of self-
PR

knowledge. Although Nottage focuses her play around African American women, the message in

Poof! crosses racial and cultural borders and has generated productions in other countries like

Japan (Nottage, Women Who Write Plays 358).

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identity and American assumptions.  !"#$% brings together five individuals in 1990s New

York who are dissatisfied with the government and its impact on the local communities. Ranging

in age, social class, and political ideology, they gather and bomb a newly erected government

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building only to discover that they have killed twelve children as a result. The group becomes

increasingly hesitant to take responsibility for their action and to report the act. Instead, they

resort to rationalizing the ideologies and theoretical concerns of their act, goal, and future until

they cannot move forward from indecisiveness.

 attests to the dangers of politics
when parties refuse to cross political lines and instead endanger those whom they claim to

advocate.

Crumbs from the Table of Joy (Crumbs) reimagines a 1950s migrant black family.

Ernestine Crump reflects on her life as a newly transplanted teenaged Floridian who moves to

W
New York with her family after her mother dies. Her father, Godfrey, moves the family there

after gaining respite from his grief through the circulars of Father Divine of the Peace Mission
IE
Movement. Led to New York to be closer to Father, Godfrey increasingly separates himself from

his daughters as his devotion increases. Ermina and Ernestine struggle to adjust to life and
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culture in New York. His sister-in-             
This caus     !          " # 
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Eventually, he remarries a German immigrant, Gerte, which triggers the tension-filled household

and continued decimation of the family. Ernestine moves out after her graduation to find her own

way and resolves to join in the lifelong activism and revolution Lily spends so much time

discussing. Crumbs presents the coming-of-age tale of a young girl and the influences in and on

her life that shape the woman she becomes, but the play also shows how misguided decisions

           

In 1996, Nottage wrote Mud, River, Stone (MRS), which grapples with the presumptions

African Americans make about Africa and their African identity. Sarah and David, a middle

class couple from New York, travel to Mozambique in search of their roots and discover that the

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Africa they imagined and that their friends described is not the Africa that they experience. The

  
      

  
  oaquim, takes everyone hostage. Joaquim

seeks to return to a normal life after the war ends but learns that there are no benefits or

arrangements for soldiers made to assist in the readjustment to life; consequently, he and his

family lack basic necessities to survive. He holds everyone hostage while waiting for the

authorities to provide blankets, his only demand. However, Mr. Blake, one of the hostages, kills

him. Mud, River, Stone is the cautionary tale not to become the stereotypical arrogant and

ignorant Americans who cannot conceive of a reality other than  own, thereby contributing

W
to the very imperialistic and oppressive behavior and assumptions one battles. Notably,

    
      
 
   
   or theatre studies.
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The Turn-of-the-Century Plays

Nearly seven years after the production of MRS, Nottage wrote and produced several
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plays back-to-back, each of which, in contrast to the plays of the 1990s, embraces singular main

character and focuses on an overarching and specific issue. Rewriting history is the issue in Las
PR

Meninas, as the play fills a gap in history and tells the story of Louise-Marie Therese, the

illegitimate daughter of seventeenth century French queen Marie-Therese and her Dahomian,

dwarf slave Nabo. Marie and Nabo develop an intimate relationship as King Louis XIV

consistently ignores Marie and flaunts his affairs before her. When Marie gets pregnant and the

king finds out, everyone awaits the delivery to learn whom the father will be. After Louise is

born and is black, the king has her sequestered in a convent, her existence stricken from

historical records and noted as a death. He also has Nabo killed, and his presence also removed

from records. Louise narrates the tale, and the nar           

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multiple discourses such as master-slave dynamics; historical authenticity; and gendered, racial,

and class politics.

The setting of Becoming American, a short one-act play, is an employee-training course

for a call center. The only speaker is the instructor who teaches the class how to sound and be

(read passing as) American. Students are encouraged to identify a city and state to claim and then

to do the necessary research to learn about their claimed home in order to convince a customer

caller of their American identity. By doing so, employees will be able to relate to the American

callers and engage them in small conversation when necessary. The play explores questions

W
about American identity what and who constitute it and interrogates the challenge of

immigrant workers as none of the employees is American.

IE
Set in 1905 New York, Intimate Apparel tells the story of Esther Mills is a single, black

seamstress. She makes corsets for women and is able to move in various spaces as she crosses
EV
racial boundaries and enters homes. Esther corresponds through letters with George Armstrong

from Barbados, who works on the Panama Canal. Illiterate, she gets the help of her clients Mrs.
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Van Buren, a wealthy white woman, and Mayme, a black prostitute and friend, to write her

letters and to read his. Esther also has a forbidden love interest in Mr. Marks, a Jewish fabric

merchant. Eventually, she marries and meets George, and she discovers marriage is not what she

imagined as he blames her for his inability to adjust to America, has an affair with Mayme, and

throws away all of her money. In a last ditch effort to keep George, Esther gives him the $1800

she has spent eighteen years saving so that one day she could open her beauty parlor. But he

leaves her, and Esther returns to her old residence determined to move on and learn from her

mistake by finding peace in herself.
              

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