Do the works of African American playwrights of the female persuasion get a fair chance at being heard on the stage? Playwright Lynn Nottage, who has been an often caustic critic on this very subject, was in London to receive the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn award for female playwrights. Only 12 percent of plays in the last three years have been authored by African American women. Worse yet, however, is there are none this year, by any woman period.
The outspoken Lynn Nottage had a few things to say to the Guardian on this subject."There's still a tremendous disparity from the number of women who are produced and the number of women who are actually writing plays. One would think that in this day and age we wouldn't have to talk about this. But it's still very much an issue. It's dismal."
On the subject of African American female playwrights Nottage notes that progress is being made but that it's also not coming fast enough for some people. She also has this to say about oppotunities for women of color in the theater. "I think that theater has been the last bastion of segregation. You see plays by African American playwrights' by and large, have majority Asian or African American cast and are produced either on smaller stages or produced in theaters that are specifically geared towards people of color."
Nottage was given the theater prize for her play Sweat and it is about poverty stricken characters in an industrial town. She interviewed steelworkers in Pennsylvania as research for the work. She also recieved the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2009 with her play Ruined. According to Wikipedia Lynn Nottage is a associate professor of theater at Columbia University and she also is a lecturer on playwriting at Yale.
