Professor Lynn Nottage to Develop Stage Musical Based on ‘Imitation of Life’
Associate Professor Lynn Nottage is set to adapt the 1933 novel Imitation of Life into a stage musical alongside John Legend, according to Playbill.
Imitation of Life, a novel by Fannie Hurst, discusses racial identity and motherhood. The story traces the lives of two women – one white, one black – as they navigate love, loss, and racial prejudice in early 20th-century America. Previously adapted into film twice, the story is now being brought to the stage for the first time under Nottage's guidance.
Nottage, a Pulitzer Prize-winner and recently named the 2022 Broadway Showperson of the year, is known for her explorations of African-American life. On May 9, 2022, she also became the first playwright ever nominated for Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Book of a Musical in the same season for Clyde’s, a new play about second chances and last resorts directed by Kate Whoriskey, and MJ the Musical, the new jukebox musical directed by Christopher Wheeldon and featuring the music of Michael Jackson.
The filmmaker Liesl Tommy is set to direct the project, with Universal Theatrical Group and Legend's Get Lifted Film Co. producing. “When I met with Universal Theatrical Group to talk about a possible collaboration, the only title I wanted to discuss was Imitation of Life," Tommy said in a statement. "I’d long been a fan of the book, and I knew there was a passionate, contemporary, and newly relevant adaptation of this story uniquely suited to musical theatre. To my mind the only collaborators for this beautifully complex, wholly American story are Lynn Nottage and John Legend; thankfully, they agreed to join me immediately in bringing their creativity and immense talents to this re-telling.”
Lynn Nottage is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter. Her plays have been produced widely in the US and throughout the world. They include Sweat (Pulitzer Prize, Obie Award, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), By The Way, Meet Vera Stark (Lilly Award, Drama Desk Nomination), Ruined (Pulitzer Prize, OBIE, Lucille Lortel, New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Audelco, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award), Intimate Apparel (American Theatre Critics and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for Best Play), Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine (OBIE Award), Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Las Meninas, Mud, River, Stone, Por’knockers and POOF! Her musical credits include the book for MJ the Musical and the book for The Secret Life of Bees with lyrics by Susan Birkenhead and music by Duncan Sheik, which premiered at Atlantic Theater Company. She produced and conceived of This is Reading, a performance installation based on two years of interviews at the Franklin Street Reading Railroad Station in Reading, PA. Nottage is also the co-founder of the production company Market Road Films, whose most recent projects include Unfinished/Deep South (Podcast), and is developing the documentary Takeover, about the Young Lords takeover of Lincoln Hospital, as well as A Girl Stands at the Door, a multi-part series on the history of school desegregation.