Lynn Nottage is a contemporary playwright from Brooklyn, NY. She earned a BA from Brown University, and an MFA from the Yale School of Drama. Her excellent plays have earned her multiple awards, including a MacArthur Award and two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama (the first and only woman to have done so) for Ruined in 2009 and Sweat in 2017. She has tackled differing topics, usually focusing on working class, especially Black, lives. She is currently an associate professor of playwriting at Columbia University.

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is the fourth Lynn Nottage play performed at our theater, after Intimate Apparel; Mud, River, Stone; and Ruined. “Vera Stark” is a Black actress who gets thrust into pre-Code Hollywood fame as a result of her role in a “Southern Epic.” We see Vera and two other Black actresses, as all of them vie, with humor, innovation, and frustration, to “make it big” on the silver screen. Vera’s sudden and unexpected stardom leads to both a long career in movies and, later in life, to controversies addressed in TV shows and symposia decades later. “By The Way, Meet Vera Stark, (is) a smart satire that takes a piercing look at the damage done by early Hollywood representations of people of color, and the legacy that echoes forth today…” Stage Left review.