When she visited campus in early November as part of RISD’s Social Equity and Inclusion Initiative, playwright, screenwriter, producer and director Lynn Nottage took time to answer a question that she’s been fielding a lot lately: Why be a theater artist in a time of crisis?
It’s striking that a writer whose honors include two Pulitzer prizes (Nottage is the only woman to have received the award twice) and a MacArthur “genius” grant grapples with an existential question as basic as this one, but such is our current political climate. Creative professionals are taking stock of whether or not their work is bettering the world around them, and whether or not they feel it should.
Throughout her career, Nottage has used her art to reveal and elevate instances of social and economic inequity. She won her first Pulitzer Prize for Ruined, a play about the wave of sexual violence that accompanied the Congolese Civil War, and has also written plays dramatizing the garment industry, the illegal ivory trade and domestic service. For Nottage, a major call to action came in 2008 at the beginning of the financial crisis when a close friend admitted to being in economic dire straits. For catharsis and clarity, she and her friend spent some time in NYC’s Zuccotti Park talking with Occupy Wall Street protestors. The experience “forced [her] to realize that we all live within shouting distance of someone in crisis.”…Click to Read More