I cant wait to share Clydes with the Chicago community, and with audiences in Los Angeles at Center Theatre Group later this fall., Director Kate Whoriskey said, Im thrilled to work with Tony Award nominee DeAdre Aziza, Nedra Snipes and Garrett Youngas well as to continue developing this play with our original collaborators Reza Salazar and Kevin Kenerly.. 2023 Cond Nast. Clydes brings an extra funny performance looking at the industrial prison system and searching the publics palates for what could be the best sandwich ever! Hours: Tues Sat from 12pm 5pm, Packages Popping up like a demon in a small window between the front and the back of the restaurant, she roars orders and insults; when she emerges, in full glory, among her minions, it is only to exert her fearful, foul-mouthed dominance. Recent work includes the libretto for the opera Intimate Apparel (LCT), the libretto for the musical MJ (Broadway), Clyde's (Broadway, 2ST), and co-curating the performance installation The Watering Hole (Signature Theater). Clydes opens May 5 at the Ensemble Theatre. . The seeds of great stories have appeared from her childhood, part of the terrain of everyday life. He became the foundation for Montrellous who I call the Buddha from the hood. Subscribe to our mailing list to receives daily updates direct to your inbox! 1996: In her play Mud, River, Stone (Playwrights Horizons), Nottage crafts a romantic comedy that doubles as an allegory about imperialism in Africa. She delivers her lines expertly and with great conviction. "The feel-good play of the season!" -Adam Feldman, Time Out New YorkWatch a sneak peek of Clyde's by Lynn Nottage, directed by Kate W. In Lynn Nottages new play, characters life stories come between slapstick riffs on sandwich-making; Alice Childresss 1955 play makes its muchbelated Broadway dbut. Led by sandwich sensei Montrellous, can the team juggle customer orders, darkpasts and their boss incessant mind games to avoid having theiraspirations burnt to a crisp? The problem is that Wilettas got a real artist inside herI want to be an actress! she says in the middle of a reverieand she learns the new method a bit too well. (Another character suffers a traumatic brain injury in the process.) Clyde's, the new play from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage, opens on Broadway November 23 at Second Stage's Helen Hayes Theater. If Nottages aim was to keep Clydes a comedy, even one about redemption, Jason had to be rebuilt; in the writing though not the performance Donovan faultlessly negotiates the contradictions the seams sometimes show. Her plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world. When that happens, get out of the kitchen! In Adubas hilarious and scalding performance, Clyde, wearing a succession of skintight dont-mess-with-me outfits by Jennifer Moeller, is a shape-shifting hellhound, all but breathing fire. It also helps that Takeshi Katas cleverly expanding set, lit for comedy by Christopher Akerlind, allows Whoriskey to hit the ground running and barely pause for 95 minutes. Nottage crafts a romantic comedy that doubles as an allegory about imperialism in Africa. The world they show us is too dark for anything but the cruelest of tales, the bleakest of forms. 1995: Nottage enters the NYC theater scene with Por'Knockers, a political satire that played at the . This ritual stayed with her. All the play's characters are formerly incarcerated, including. In the kitchen of a truck stop diner near Reading, PA, a group of formerly incarcerated cooks work together to get their shot at redemption. The systems that control our lives institutional racism, predatory capitalism, the prison-industrial complex seem as powerful and implacable as gods. 84 Luckie St. NW Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner (for Ruined and Sweat) Lynn Nottage layers ripe wit, flavourful characters and surprises in this poignant story of sandwiches and second chances. What is Clyde but a greasy-spoon Satan, the diabolical voice seductively whispering Dont get too high on hope to people trying to escape their past? Privacy and Terms of Use. 1995: Nottage enters the NYC theater scene with, a political satire that played at the Vineyard Theatre. View our Health and Safety Plan Sex has something to do with her powerthe passes she makes at her employees register as vague threats. Into this uncomfortable equilibrium comes Jason (Edmund Donovan), recently out of prison and covered with white supremacist tattoos. There were factories and a whole infrastructure revolved around supporting people. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. "A truck-stop diner is a space of . This stirring, masterful play from the team of Nottage and director Kate Whoriskey (Ruined and Sweat) makes its Chicago premiere after its Tony-nominated run on Broadway. I became very interested in the ways that economic stagnation was reshaping the American narrative, she says. If it aint brown or gray, it can be fried. Fire up the skillet. She is bent on making the crew miserable, while hopping all over each other to answer her commands. Though it ultimately rejects the Greek model, it is still about gods and mortals. 2008: After several years of research, Nottage wins her first Pulitzer for Ruined (Goodman Theatre), a reimagining of Brechts Mother Courage and Her Children set in a Congolese bar. The complete lists are at americantheatre.org. <> They spill their guts without much prompting, and, in the spilling, court intimacyor, in the frustrating case of the title character, give nothing at all. The employees of Clyde's an unassuming caf sitting on a long stretch of road in Pennsylvania, and the name of Lynn Nottage's new play periodically indulge in a whimsical activity. Young, left, plays Tish who stole some oxy and addy to sell on the side. And Salazar, as Rafael, held up a bank to buy his girlfriend a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. Still, the cooks are in purgatory, not hell. Clyde- Late 30's - 50's. Black. Nottage says that the story, which is loosely inspired by the life of her great-grandmother, came to her during a watershed moment. WINNER: 4 DRAMA DESK AWARDS NOMINATED: 5 TONY AWARDS, INCLUDING "BEST NEW PLAY" CLYDE'S is a sweet and salty new Broadway comedy from Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage (Sweat).). To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. As a result, the statistics about the seasons diversity have been updated in this story. Sad tales are divots for us to navigate between laughs. Deeply felt, quirky, and urgent, CLYDES shows Lynn Nottages genius for bringing politically charged themes to life by embodying them in ordinary characters living ordinary lives (The Wall Street Journal). A cultural guide to going out and loving your city. Anyone can read what you share. 1993: Lynn Nottage makes her professional debut with the Actors ' Theatre of Louisville's production of Poof, a one-act comedy about a woman whose abusive husband spontaneously combusts. Lynn Nottage is the first woman in history to win two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. I think the most poignant moment is the very end where they are all making a sandwich together, she says. Dominatrix. Manners, who is white, thinks the play is on the cutting edge of race relationsat least, as close to that edge as the theatres commercial imperatives will allow. All rights reserved. After Clydes, the other most popular shows include some crowd-pleasing entertainments the comedy Chicken & Biscuits, a stage adaptation of Clue, the musical Once alongside more challenging fare, like Nottages play Sweat. After Nottage and Gunderson, the most-produced playwrights are Matthew Lpez, August Wilson and Dominique Morisseau. 2004: Nottage follows up her success with Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (Baltimore Center Stage), a sort of modern-day companion piece to Intimate Apparel. Last show I was in, I wouldnt even tell my relatives, Millie says. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. The point would be much the same, though, if it werent: Sometimes, theres a good reason you cant stand the heat. Single Tickets the Michael Jackson jukebox musical. endobj endobj We are making plans to ensure the health and safety of our audiences, artists, and staff. (In New York, there are three: Into the Woods, which opened on Broadway this summer; Merrily We Roll Along, running at New York Theater Workshop this winter; and Sweeney Todd, coming to Broadway next spring.). In the process, she encountered a large proportion of people who were formerly incarcerated. Clyde's Photo Gallery. As their fiery boss cranks up the pressure, and a new staff member rocks the boat, they have to unite to fight back the only way they can: by making the perfect sandwich. Lynn Nottage is a playwright and a screenwriter . Its a comedy, but its not turning away from the world.. Creating the perfect sandwich is the shared quest of the formerly incarcerated kitchen staff of Clydes, a truck stop cafe. The play theyre rehearsing, slated for Broadway, is about small-town Black folks who, because they want the right to vote, get threatenedand worseby a gathering lynch mob. EDWARD ALBEES WHOS AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF. But Nottages delightful new play, Clydes, which opened at the Helen Hayes Theater on Tuesday, dares to flip the paradigm. September 27th preview performance of Clyde's. The script does contain strong language and discussions of violence and drug use. CLYDE'S By: Lynn Nottage CHARACTER BREAKDOWN Director: Alex Rodriguez Rehearsal Start Date: July 9, 2023 Production Dates: August 18-September 17, 2023 . which follows the affair between Queen Marie-Therese and Nabo, her African servant. They are caught up in some way or another by the forces of history, shaped by the confluence of race, class and gender. boxofficer@ardentheatre.org. 2017: With longtime director Kate Whoriskey and her husband, the filmmaker Tony Gerber, Nottage pilots, a site-specific piece designed to run in the same Pennsylvania town where she set. 4 0 obj Rafael (Reza Salazar) fumblingly pines for her. At first it seems that Jasons integration into the kitchen will form the storys spine: Tish quickly warns him that she knows all about breaking wild white horses. But it turns out to be less of a spine than a rib. Able to change the temperature of a room with an entrance. Part of my desire as I got older was to amplify some of the beautiful and important and tragic stories that I heard.. Because they were formerly incarcerated, they didnt have access to many things that we take for granted., A Lynn Nottage play often makes use of a liminal space. stream He leads the group in sessions of visualization and conjecturewhat kind of sandwich can your mind conjure up? I decided that I could research what her life would have been like. She was the first woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice; the first in 2009 for Ruined, and the second in 2017 for Sweat. Mass Market Paperback. Lynn Nottages Clydes Is the Most-Staged Play in America, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/theater/most-popular-plays-playwrights.html. Uzo Aduba as Clyde and Ron Cephas Jones as Montrellous in Lynn Nottages latest play, Clydes, at the Helen Hayes Theater in Manhattan. Even as the shops mischievous owner tries to keep them under her thumb, the staffers are given purpose and permission to dreamfinding that sometimes a hero is more than a sandwich (New York Times). Lynn Nottage's 'Clyde's' is a comedy with great social commentary. Wiletta starts out as a jaded veteran, advising a younger actor to laugh at the directors jokes and tell little lies to pad his rsum. Montrellous is the king of the groupI would call him a sandwich whisperer, because the other three sandwich chefs cling onto his every word, and an angelic lighting seems to glow whenever he shares his recipe for the perfect sandwich as they are all encouraged to do throughout the 95-minute performance. Even a schmuck like Manners can read some Stanislavsky, bring it clumsily into rehearsals, and, unwittingly, spark the beginnings of a revolution. Another underdeveloped plotline explores the possibility of the diner becoming a destination restaurant. PERFORMANCE FEE: $130 per performance. In the kitchen of the truck stop diner that gives the play its title, the cooks making the sandwiches have all served time. Nottage tells me she understood how to write the play when she came across the Japanese notion of wabi sabi, the ability to find beauty in things that are broken. Great comedic chops. New York, NY, SM for Poor Yella Rednecks the play debuts at Baltimore Center Stage to widespread critical acclaim, and Nottage becomes one of the nations most prominent theatrical figures. (Clydes own answer to anybody elses suffering is to dismiss it. Seductive. What can humans do about fate, these playwrights suggest, but submit to it and hope to preserve the story? In Sweat, a dive bar. That same year, Second Stage also premieres Crumbs from the Table of Joy, a memory play about teenagers struggling to cope with their mothers death. Notably, though composers are not tracked by the survey, work with songs by Stephen Sondheim is experiencing a spike in popularity since his death last year, with at least 19 productions planned around the country. The finding that fewer productions are being mounted is troubling, though not surprising artistic directors around the country have been saying that they were ramping back up slowly after the pandemic shutdown because audiences have not come back in prepandemic numbers. Join StageAgent today and unlock amazing theatre resources and opportunities. Sign up today to unlock amazing theatre resources and opportunities. Still, wheres the action? In the intervening years, she has become one of America's most renowned playwrights, with multiple shows on Broadway (sometimes concurrently), two Pulitzer prizes, and a resume that includes opera, TV, and the multi-media site-specific installation This is Reading. Letitia has served time for stealing from a pharmacy to ensure that her special needs daughter is well cared for. Loves to expose vulnerabilities. Clyde is an ex-convict, and so are the people who work for her, a fact that she hangs over their heads like rain in a cloud at every opportunitynobody else is going to hire them, so theyd better submit to her whims, however brutal. Call it soul. Rafael (Reza Salazar) held up a bank but (a) with a BB gun, and (b) only because he wanted to buy his girlfriend a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. My daughter was born and then my mother died, and it shifted my notion of what and who I wanted to write about, she says. Theres something alien and ineffable about them that cant be reduced to mere facts, or be rationalized by psychology. Synopsis The play takes place in Clyde's, a truck stop sandwich shop frequented by truckers making the long journey across Pennsylvania. Theaters around America appear to be staging fewer shows than they were before the pandemic, but a lot of the work they are doing is by Lynn Nottage. WINNER: 4 DRAMA DESK AWARDS NOMINATED: 5 TONY AWARDS, INCLUDING BEST NEW PLAY. All I did was shout Lord, have mercy! for almost two hours every night. Its a representational lament that sounds stale until you realize that the play was written more than sixty-five years ago. In Intimate Apparel, the bedroom. Trouble in Mind is pessimistic about the structures that underpin the entertainment industry, but it is bullish about the possibilities of earnest artistic pursuit. Subscribe to Live Theatre! BOX OFFICE 202.332.3300ADMINISTRATION 202.232.7267DONATIONS 202.919.3712, MAIN 1501 14th Street NWWashington, DC 20005, MAILING ADDRESSPO Box 73102Washington, DC 20056, BOX OFFICE HOURSMondays ClosedTuesday Thursday, Noon 6:00pm (until 6:30pm when performance scheduled)Friday, Noon 6:00pm (until 7:00pm when performance scheduled)Saturday, Noon 7:00pm (performance days only)Sunday, Noon 6:00pm (performance days only), ARTISTIC DIRECTOR David MuseEXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Rebecca Ende Lichtenberg, 1993: Lynn Nottage makes her professional debut with the Actors. Were working to restore it. Nottage, 58, would go on to become the first woman in history to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama twice and only the second playwright of colour to become a two-time winner, after August Wilson. Lynn Nottage's plays include 'Crumbs from the Table of Joy,' 'Fabulation' and 'Intimate Apparel,' for which she was awarded the Francesca Primus Prize and the American Theatre Critics/Steinberg New Play Award in 2004. Nottage grew up in Boerum Hill, a Brooklyn neighbourhood that was once a haven for artists, hippies and working-class communities. How economic stagnation is reshaping the American narrative on stage. Anyone can read what you share. Creating the perfect sandwich is the shared quest of the formerly incarcerated kitchen staff of Clyde's, a truck stop cafe. (A) delightful new play. They were all storytellers. Clyde (Uzo Aduba) is the badass, shit-talking, intermittently horny, sometimes violent proprietor of the roadside shop. Her two Pulitzer Prizes are for works in which the world and its people are trapped in an abusive relationship. %PDF-1.7 Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Here, those skills are tossed aside. Lynn Nottage has sometimes been one of them. The criminal justice system used to bus people to Reading when they got out because there was an abundance of work, she says. Clyde's January 26 - March 12, 2023 By Lynn Nottage Directed by Malika Oyetimein Arcadia Stage Expected Runtime: 90 minutes with no intermission Honorary Producers: Risa and Bob Lavizzo-Mourey Chicago audiences are first to experience Clydes following its Broadway run, where it earned five Tony Award nominations and was critically hailed as a delightful new play (New York Times). She wants the basics, nothing more. As the day wears on, Clyde is constantly ringing the bell for sandwich orders to be taken, as she periodically flirts with Jason while wearing suggestive clothing with matching boots. 2001: After taking some time away around the birth of her daughter, Nottage returns to the theater with. The quest to create the perfect sandwich takes on existential tones in Clyde's, the tasty if occasionally and slightly undercooked new dramedy from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage. Sign up to our Culture Fix newsletter here. That same year, Second Stage also premieres. We are living in Greek times or so you might conclude from the preponderance of Greek tragedies turned out by todays playwrights. Nottage writes plays that are peopled by complex characters. Nottage describes Clyde's as magical realism, and says it's set both in the kitchen of a sandwich shop and a liminal space. And no wonder. They are not merely victims of fate; they can use their moral imagination to resist the Clydes of this world. x\YS#G~'j]GB `v|y2,~3$\VWUUeVo~Nq4ayrrH~;%%VH_%'9 wph I am beyond thrilled to be returning to the Goodman Theatre, which has been so instrumental in nurturing me as a theater artist, said playwright Nottage, whose works at the Goodman include Sweat (2019), By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (2013), Ruined (her Pulitzer Prize-winning world-premiere Goodman commission and co-production with Manhattan Theatre Club, 2008) and Crumbs from the Table of Joy (2006). It stars Nancy Denis as the diners controlling boss, Clyde, and is directed by Darren Yap. Clyde's centres around a truck-stop diner. And Jason is new to the diner and not trusted by the others, because he obviously has tattoos that are believed to be gang tributes. <>/ExtGState<>/XObject<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> 'Ruined' is the winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and . In Lynn Nottages bright new comedy, cooks at a greasy spoon dream of remaking the menu and their lives. On a long stretch of highway, in the middle of here and there, Clydes truck stop diner sizzles with the aroma of possibility and redemption.Between slinging grilled cheese and tuna melts, the formerly incarcerated kitchen staff at Clydes dream of creating the perfect recipe. It contains adult language and adult themes. Their first collaboration, 2003 . When they got out, they were in this liminal space. A playwright and a screenwriter, Nottage is the first woman in history to win two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Letitia (Kara Young) got greedy and stole some oxy and addy to sell on the side after breaking into a pharmacy to obtain seizure medication for her daughter. Clyde toys with angry fear when her troubles come up, but she never revisits it. A one-time nonprofessional fee of $300.00 (plus shipping and handling) will be added. Yet in Clydes, Nottage does something shrewd with the obvious underlinings that can sometimes make her meticulously researched plays feel didactic. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 2001: After taking some time away around the birth of her daughter, Nottage returns to the theater with Las Meninas (San Jose Repertory Theatre), which follows the affair between Queen Marie-Therese and Nabo, her African servant. 1 0 obj ee#{Jn`j}$O3$x;$3$22)C"3c\lljI%&EI>rxyY^NQ31(Oi9{lPe,yuL*wfIsUQX_8}%g`Mx*fgd0YZ[W^Wr@;t
