Lynn Nottage Is Honoree Of 39th William Inge Theater Festival In Independence, Kansas

Lynn Nottage, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is the Playwright Honoree of the 39th William Inge Theater Festival.

The Festival takes place May 20-23 of 2020, at the William Inge Center for the Arts in Independence, KS, where Nottage will accept the Distinguished Achievement in the American Theater Award.

Nottage will join the roster of acclaimed writers who have attended the Festival, including Arthur Miller, August Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Paula Vogel.

"This celebration is long-overdue," said Hannah Joyce-Hoven, Producing Director of the William Inge Center for the Arts. "Lynn's work has been transforming the voice and the face of the American Theater for decades. We look forward to celebrating and sharing her work with theater-lovers and makers from across the country, in Kansas next year."

"Lynn Nottage is an integral part of the American Theater canon," states associate producer Chuma Gault. "The breadth of subject matter of her two Pulitzer prize winning plays alone qualifies her as an American master playwright."

Nottage, a screenwriter as well as playwright, is the first woman in history to win two Pulitzers for Drama. The most recent is for Sweat, which played Broadway in 2017 and was also nominated for Tony Award for Best Play. Set in Reading, PA, it is the story of a group of factory workers struggling to keep their lives in balance, unaware of financial devastation looming in their near future.

Ruined (2007 Pulitzer winner) is also a poignant story inspired by interviews Nottage conducted with refugees in the Congo. Ruined is an engrossing human story with humor and song served alongside its setting in a civil war.

Nottage's many acclaimed plays also include: Mlima's Tale (Lortel Award Nomination, Outer Critics Circle Nomination), By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (Drama Desk Nomination, Lilly Award), Intimate Apparel (American Theatre Critics and New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards for Best Play), and Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (Lortel Award Nomination, Drama Desk Nomination, Obie Award).

Additional productions include: Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por'knockers and POOF!. She also developed This is Reading, a performance installation in Reading, PA. She wrote the book for the world premiere musical adaption of Sue Monk Kidd's novel The Secret Life of Bees, with music by Duncan Sheik and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead. The Secret Life of Bees recently opened at the Atlantic Theatre Company in New York.

Nottage is working with composer Ricky Ian Gordon on adapting her play Intimate Apparel into an opera, commissioned by The Met/Lincoln Center Theater.

For the screen, Nottage is co-founder of the production company Market Road Films whose most recent projects include The Notorious Mr. Bout (Premiere/Sundance 2014), First to Fall (Premiere/ IDFA, 2013) and Remote Control (Premiere/Busan 2013- New Currents Award). Over the years, she has developed original projects for HBO, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, Showtime, This is That, and Harpo. She is writer/producer on the Netflix series She's Gotta Have It, directed by Spike Lee.

Nottage is a member of the Dramatists Guild, an Associate Professor at Columbia University School of the Arts, and the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, Steinberg "Mimi" Distinguished Playwright Award, Doris Duke Artists Award, and PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award, among many more honors.

The Inge Festival is the Official Theater Festival of Kansas, as designated by the state legislature. The four-day festival will include numerous performances, a New Play Lab of new plays in development, workshops for theater students and the public, social events, and more.

Major contributors include the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, William Inge Festival Foundation, and Independence Community College.

For more information visit www.ingefestival.org

For a complete biography of Lynn Nottage, visit http://www.lynnnottage.com/about.html.