Cleary Gottlieb hosted its summer diversity virtual reception, Unsung: The Multicultural Female Voice – An Evening With American Playwright and Screenwriter Lynn Nottage, the first and only woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice.
Over 270 participants attended the event. Brief welcome and introductory remarks were provided by partner Jennifer Kennedy Park. Partner Kim Blacklow moderated the discussion.
Lynn discussed her life and career as a playwright and screenwriter. A graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama, her Pulitzer Prize-winning play Sweat moved to Broadway in the spring of 2017 after a sold-out run at The Public Theater. It premiered and was commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival American Revolutions History Cycle/Arena Stage. Inspired by her research on Sweat, she developed This Is Reading, a performance installation based on two years of interviews, at the Franklin Street, Reading Railroad Station in Reading, Pennsylvania, in July 2017.
Other plays include Floyd’s; Mlima’s Tale; By The Way, Meet Vera Stark; Ruined; Intimate Apparel; Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine; Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por’knockers; and POOF!. She recently wrote the book for the world premiere musical adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees, with music by Duncan Sheik and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead. It premiered at the Atlantic Theatre Company in May 2019 and was directed by Sam Gold. Other upcoming work includes an opera adaptation of her play Intimate Apparel composed by Ricky Ian Gordon and commissioned by The Met/LCT.
She is the co-founder of the production company, Market Road Films, whose most recent projects include The Notorious Mr. Bout directed by Tony Gerber and Maxim Pozdorovkin, First to Fall directed by Rachel Beth Anderson, and Remote Control. Over the years, Lynn has developed original projects for HBO, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, Showtime, This Is That, and Harpo. She was a writer/producer on the Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It, directed by Spike Lee. She is also an associate professor in the theatre department at Columbia School of the Arts.
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