1993: Lynn Nottage makes her professional debut with the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville’s production of Poof, a one-act comedy about a woman whose abusive husband spontaneously combusts.
1995: Nottage enters the NYC theater scene with Por'Knockers, a political satire that played at the Vineyard Theatre. That same year, Second Stage also premieres Crumbs from the Table of Joy, a memory play about teenagers struggling to cope with their mother’s death.
1996: In her play Mud, River, Stone (Playwrights’ Horizons), Nottage crafts a romantic comedy that doubles as “an allegory about imperialism in Africa”.
2001: After taking some time away around the birth of her daughter, Nottage returns to the theater with Las Meninas (San Jose Repertory Theatre), which follows the affair between Queen Marie-Therese and Nabo, her African servant.
2003: Inspired by her grandmother’s persistence as a New York City seamstress, Nottage writes Intimate Apparel; the play debuts at Baltimore Center Stage to widespread critical acclaim, and Nottage becomes one of the nation’s most prominent theatrical figures.
2004: Nottage follows up her success with Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (Baltimore Center Stage), a sort of modern-day companion piece to Intimate Apparel.
2008: After several years of research, Nottage wins her first Pulitzer for Ruined (Goodman Theatre), a reimagining of Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children set in a Congolese bar.
2011: Nottage goes for bright, nuanced, comedy with By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (Second Stage), a runaway hit exploring 70 years in the life of a (fictional) Hollywood starlet.
2015: Sweat, a play about economic downturn in Reading, PA, debuts at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; two years later, the play goes on to win Nottage her second Pulitzer.
2017: With longtime director Kate Whoriskey and her husband, the filmmaker Tony Gerber, Nottage pilots This is Reading, a site-specific piece designed to run in the same Pennsylvania town where she set Sweat.
2018: The Public premieres Mlima’s Tale, which follows the ghost of a slaughtered elephant.
2021: Nottage writes the book for MJ, the Michael Jackson jukebox musical. Clyde’s opened on Broadway in November of 2021.
2022: Clyde’s joins MJ on Broadway, while across town at the Met, Nottage collaborates with composer Ricky Ian Gordon to producer the opera version of Intimate Apparel. At the 2022 Tony’s, Nottage is nominated for both Clyde’s and MJ.