Those fortunate enough to have seen characters grace the stage conceived by the
imagination of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage over the
past two decades are well aware of her storytelling ingenuity. What the audience
seated in Edison Theatre learned Wednesday afternoon as she was presented with
the Washington University International Humanities Prize is that this gift extends
to her own lived experiences.
Nottage said that unless the masses push back, the nation – and the world – face a future where there will no longer be space to authentically tell our stories.
After having the medal placed around her neck, she centered herself at the podium.
Her prepared remarks leaned heavily on a traumatic experience she suffered with
her Columbia University students while attending a Sunday morning worship
service at a New York City megachurch.
“I want to talk about an incident that has been on my mind for a while and in some
ways it speaks to where we are in culture,” Nottage said. Her lecture was as
enthralling as the scenes within her scripts – and spoke to why she was selected to
receive the honor, which is one of the largest humanities prizes in the nation and is
funded by Phyllis Wilson Grossman and David W. Grossman.
“She is the first and only woman two receive two Pulitzer Prizes,” said Zachariah
Ezer, playwright and Assistant Professor of Performing Arts. “She has received a
MacArthur ‘Genius’ grant, a Guggenheim grant, a Rockefeller Award for
Creativity and too many others to list if you actually want to hear what Lynn has to
say this afternoon.”
He kept his introduction brief, but he took the liberty of one more moment of
praise before yielding the stage to Nottage.
“Lynn Nottage is one of the most influential and vital playwrights in American
theatre,” said Ezer. “Her work, which often highlights the real conditions of some
of the most vulnerable in our society has served as an inspiration to a generation of
theater audiences and theater makers.”
Nottage verified his remarks as she spoke of an incident she shared as part of her
class curriculum as a professor of Theatre Arts at the Columbia University School
of the Arts. Before her story commenced, she expressed her gratitude.
“Thank you for recognizing the power of humanities and the necessity of
storytelling,” Nottage said. “Especially in a moment like now when our voices are
being censored, histories erased, identities denied, people being kidnapped off the
streets, our schools, our foundations and our arts institutions are under attack. Our
silence is being cultivated where there should be beautiful bursts of creativity and
invention.”
Then she proceeded to keep the audience on the edge of their seats with a story that
reflected the current state of our nation. At Columbia she teaches a course called
American Spectacle.
She asks her students to stretch the notion of what constitutes theater – and she
challenges them to think more expansively about storytelling structure and the
restrictions of traditional dramaturgy. Part of the coursework includes field trips to
megachurches.
“America evangelical services are perhaps the most insurgent form of faith based
drama that is performed in the world,” Nottage said. “They reshape the very way
people worship and think about religion and culture and politics.”
For more than a decade, she and her students have been attending these services
without incident. That was until Nottage and 11 of her students visited a
megachurch in New York City’s Theater District. Ironically – or perhaps fittingly –
the church was a renovated theatre space.
All was well until a woman began to wail during the service. Pastor Tim, a middle-
aged white man with mostly Black and brown congregants, responded in a way
that Nottage never expected. He demanded that the woman be removed from the
church. He then began to rant about
intellectuals at universities that are poisoning the minds of young people and
planting demon thoughts in their vulnerable heads.
Nottage looked around at the faces of color transfixed by the pastor’s toxic
message and felt like she had to do something to stop the madness and break the
spell. She rolled up a copy of an Atlantic Magazine she had in her bag and used it
as a megaphone.
“You are a dangerous man and you are harming these people,” Nottage shouted
through her makeshift sound amplifier.
“Ignore that woman,” Pastor Tim shouted.
“I will not be ignored,” Nottage fired back.
Though this was the first time this had happened to Nottage, it conjured up a
familiar feeling.
“I was confronted by a hateful man in a position of power who wanted to erase my
presence,” Nottage said. “As I was being escorted from that theater, I interrogated
my own beliefs about the role of theater in our culture. It made me think long and
hard about the responsibility I have as a storyteller and a griot.”
As the pastor used his stage to craft a dangerous message, she realized that as a
storyteller she had tools to create a different one.
Nottage said that unless the masses push back, the nation – and the world – face a
future where there will no longer be space to authentically tell our stories.
She said that in times of crisis, storytellers like herself are the “second responders.”
“People turn to us to distill, reflect and make sense of what’s happening,” Nottage
said. “It isn’t our role to fix things. Our job is to provide a vocabulary – a language
– that helps us to decipher, process and move through these murky times.”
Nottage strives to sustain the complexity of what it means to be a black female
writer in a culture that doesn’t always value her stories.
“I write plays to place the narratives of people like my mother and her friends
center stage,” Nottage said. “And ensure that their stories are a part of a larger
cultural conversation.”
She also writes to help interrogate assumptions about who gets to tell our stories.
“As writers, our job is to be loud thinkers, even though we are often soft speakers,”
Nottage said. “I roll up my magazine and shout to those seeking to silence our
voices, ‘I will not be ignored.’”
Living It content is produced with funding by the ARPA for the Arts grants program in partnership with the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis and the Community Development Administration.
