Associate Professor Lynn Nottage has been named the 2022 Broadway Showperson of the Year. After a marathon year in which she put up three new pieces of work, Nottage's contributions to the world of theatre—especially in the midst of challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic—are being recognized as not only an incredible feat, but also a labor of love.
“I was surprised and absolutely delighted to be named Showperson of the year,” Nottage said. “I did a lot of heavy lifting in 2022, juggling the production of two shows on Broadway and a new opera while teaching full-time at Columbia. This year represents my deep investment in theater that wasn’t dimmed or diminished by Covid!”
Nottage, a playwright and a screenwriter, remains the only woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice. 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 power of the work by Lynn Nottage, as part of the 2022-2023 Broadway season, is to create a dynamic and welcome complexity of the often forgotten,” actress Uzo Aduba said in a tribute to Nottage on Broadway News. “Lynn’s work this season was so important because it offered a window into the everyday lives of people open to hope in a world that is seemingly resistant [to] giving hope to them. The mastery of Lynn Nottage is that she imbues this environment with humor.”
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.
