Intimate Apparel
By Lynn Nottage
Directed by Catherine Pappas
January 11,12,13,17,18,19,20,24,25,26

An African-American seamstress in 1905 New York City, unmarried and with few friends, makes her living crafting fine ladies undergarments. Unsure of herself, timid, she endures much heartache and disappointment, but ultimately finds peace andinner strength through the artistry of her fingers. Sensitively drawn characters are psychologically insightful and true to their historical context.

★ Engaging • Poignant • Perceptive ★

Intimate Apparel takes on some fairly consequential issues – race, gender, class, and the marital state – but it does so in a somewhat subdued manner, the way things would have to transpire in the New York City of 1905, the place and time of this story.  Esther Mills, a lonely and talented African-American seamstress, has managed to make a decent living creating exquisite lingerie for well-to-do ladies (and ladies ... who wish to look well-to-do).  In nearly two decades of determined labor, she has squirreled away quite a sizable nest egg and dreams of getting a husband and having a business of her own.  Her skills ... and her discretion ... are much prized among her clients, and she is quite proud of her accomplishments; but as time goes on, Esther shares a certain quiet desperation with her intimates -- a piano-playing prostitute, a wealthy customer with an uncaring husband, and a Jewish business associate who could have been much more to her, but not in the moral and cultural climate of turn-of-the-twentieth-century America. 

Enter George Armstrong, a Caribbean man laboring on the dangerous Panama Canal, who begins a correspondence with Esther.  With his romantic prose and plans to come to New York, he emerges as a potential life companion.  But George has dreams too, and it is still 1905, so he is destined to experience the impact of the forces governing race and gender that have squelched the dreams of so many others.  However, it is Esther about whom we really care:  and we recognize that all those rules and restrictions existing within society are just like the corsets that she fashions – bejeweled restraints.  Can this talented and determined black woman overcome those barriers to forge a future for herself?

            The plays of Lynn Nottage (b. 1964) have been produced in American and international venues, and have garnered numerous awards.  Intimate Apparel won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play, along with several other awards, for its production at the Roundabout Theatre Company in 2004.  It achieved the distinction of being the most produced play in American regional theatre in the year 2006.  A singular honor was bestowed on the playwright just this fall, when she was named a MacArthur Fellow for 2007.  The award (AKA the “genius grant”), in the amount of $500,000, solidifies Nottage’s status as a major voice in theatre, whose thought-provoking works address contemporary issues with scholarship, wit, and originality.