Intimate Apparel

Intimate Apparel is about the empowerment of Esther, a proud and shy seamstress in 1905 New York who creates exquisite lingerie for both Fifth Avenue boudoirs and Tenderloin bordellos.

About the playwright 

Lynn Nottage 

Lynn Nottage is a playwright, a screenwriter and installation artist. She is the first, and remains the only, woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice. Her plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world.
 
Most recently, Nottage premiered MJ the Musical, directed by Christopher Wheeldon and featuring the music of Michael Jackson, at the Neil Simon Theater on Broadway, Clyde’s directed by Kate Whoriskey at Second Stage Theater on Broadway and an opera adaptation of her play Intimate Apparel composed by Ricky Ian Gordon and directed by Bart Sher, commissioned by The Met/Lincoln Center Theater and co-curated with Director Miranda Haymon the Performance Installation The Watering Hole at the Signature Theater.

She is the co-founder of the production company, Market Road Films, whose most recent projects include the. award winning documentary Takeover (NY times, Op-doc) by Emma Francis Francis-Snyder, the Peabody nominated podcast Unfinished: Deep South (Stitcher) by Taylor Hom and Neil Shea, The Notorious Mr. Bout directed by Tony Gerber and Maxim Pozdorovkin (Premiere/Sundance 2014), First to Fall directed by Rachel Beth Anderson (Premiere/ IDFA, 2013) and Remote Control (Premiere/Busan 2013- New Currents Award).  Market Road Films currently has a first look deal with SISTER. Over the years, she has developed original projects for Amazon, HBO, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, Showtime, This is That and Harpo. She was a writer and producer on the Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It, directed by Spike Lee and a consulting producer on the third season of Dickinson (Apple +). 

Nottage is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, Steinberg “Mimi” Distinguished Playwright Award, PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award, William Inge Festival Distinguished Playwright, TIME 100 (2019), Signature One Playwright, Merit and Literature Award from The Academy of Arts and Letters, Columbia University Provost Grant, Doris Duke Artist Award, The Joyce Foundation Commission Project & Grant, Madge Evans-Sidney Kingsley Award, Nelson A. Rockefeller Award for Creativity, The Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, the inaugural Horton Foote Prize, Helen Hayes Award, the Lee Reynolds Award, and the Jewish World Watch iWitness Award. Her other honors include the National Black Theatre Fest’s August Wilson Playwriting Award, a Guggenheim Grant, Lucille Lortel Fellowship and Visiting Research Fellowship at Princeton University. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama.  She is also a Professor of Theatre Arts at Columbia School of the Arts.

– Bio by Lynn Nottage

About the moderator

Michelle Mitchell A native Memphian, Michelle E. Mitchell is a lover of the arts. She has a host of acting, writing, directing, producing, dancing, and choreography credits both locally and across the country. Michelle graduated from Southern University and A&M College with a B.S. in Business Marketing. After obtaining her degree, she combined her business savvy with her devotion to the arts and in 2015 founded “A Taste of Theatre”- a dinner theatre that combined the experience of live theatre with fine dining. Since then she has successfully produced six shows and is working on her 7th that will take place March 1-3, 2024 at the Memphis Music Room. Along with “A Taste of Theatre,” her most recent works include a role in the musical Scottsboro Boys, playing Tigonie in the world-premiere stage play of Tigonie at the 2023 Onyx Festival in Indianapolis, and a host of local and national commercials. She also portrayed Shayla Jackson in the box office film “Brian Banks”. She is super excited to moderate the Read to Relate Forum again this year and hopes you will come out and be a part of the discussion!