Lynn Nottage on 'MJ' and 'sustaining the complexity' in her dramatic works
LOS ANGELES — Playwright Lynn Nottage has been making up for lost time. After the lengthy pandemic pause, she had three productions running simultaneously in New York this year.
An opera adaptation of her well-regarded play "Intimate Apparel," featuring a score by Ricky Ian Gordon, premiered at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, where it was filmed for PBS' "Great Performances." "MJ," the Broadway jukebox musical about Michael Jackson, anxiously opened in February after a couple of months of previews, but with no out-of-town tryouts to test the waters. And "Clyde's," her comedy about formerly incarcerated workers at a truck-stop sandwich shop, ended its Broadway run in January, picking up five Tony nominations along the way.
According to American Theatre magazine, which prepares an annual list that excludes productions of "A Christmas Carol" and Shakespeare, Nottage is the most produced playwright of the 2022-23 season (tied with Lauren Gunderson with 24 productions). And "Clyde's," which is now entertaining audiences at the Mark Taper Forum, is the most produced play of the season.
Whew, it's tiring just typing that litany of work. And I haven't even mentioned that she teaches full time at Columbia University.
"I likened this period to running a marathon," Nottage said in a downstairs lounge at the Taper one weekday afternoon when she was in town from New York to see the production. "You don't really understand the extent
