By the Way, Meet Vera Stark
by Lynn Nottage

Off-Broadway
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark Book Cover
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark Cover

Highlights

120 mins Present Day Role(s) for Black Actor(s) Strong Role for Leading Woman (Star Vehicle) Unit Set/Multiple Settings Period Costumes American Black History Comedy

Awards & Recognition

Drama Desk Award

Winner! 2010 Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award Nominee: Six 2012 Drama Desk Awards, including Outstanding Play

Synopsis

"Nottage is one of our finest playwrights, a smart, empathetic, and daring storyteller who tells a story an audience won't expect."-Time Out New York"Lynn Nottage's work explores depths of humanness, the overlapping complexities of race, gender, culture and history-and the startling simplicity of desire-with a clear tenderness, with humor, with compassion."-Paula Vogel, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrightIn her first new play since the critically acclaimed Ruined, Lynn Nottage examines the legacy of African Americans in Hollywood in a dramatic stylistic departure from her previous work.

Fluidly incorporating film and video elements into her writing for the first time, Nottage's comedy tells the story of Vera Stark, an African American maid and budding actress who has a tangled relationship with her boss, a white Hollywood star desperately grasping to hold onto her career.

Stirring audiences out of complacency by tackling racial stereotyping in the entertainment industry, Nottage highlights the paradox of black actors in 1930s Hollywood while jumping back and forward in time and location in this uniquely theatrical narrative.

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark premiered in New York in 2011 and received subsequent productions at Los Angeles's Geffen Playhouse in fall 2012 and Chicago's Goodman Theatre and The Lyric Stage Company of Boston in spring 2013

Lynn Nottage's plays include the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ruined; Intimate ApparelFabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine; Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por'Knockers; and POOF!

Press Reviews

"A satisfying screwball comedy."

— Vogue

"That this show is so informed and incisive while being wildly entertaining may be Nottage’s biggest achievement here: In a way, she’s beaten Hollywood at its own game."

— New York Post

"[Nottage’s] play has fangs. It gnaws at racial typecasting and at smarty-pants who build myths and think they understand all there is to know about someone by reviewing films."

— New York Daily News

"Vera Stark breezes by with the playfulness of a Russian nesting doll, each image reflecting on the previous ones while entertaining on its own."

— New York Newsday

Characters

Character
Gloria Mitchell
Leroy Barksdale/Herb Forrester
Lottie Mcbride/Carmen Levy-Green
Anna Mae Simpkins/Afua Assata Ejobo
Fredrick Slasvick/Brad Donovan
Maxmillian Von Oster/Peter Rhys-Davies
Vera Stark

Publication

Year 2013
Binding Paperback
Edition 1st
Pages 64
Language English
ISBN-13 9780822226468
ISBN-10 0822226464

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is a American black history play written by Lynn Nottage and published by Dramatists Play Service (2013).

Digital editions available on Amazon Kindle .

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Rating

4.2

392 ratings · 25 reviews

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Performance Rights

Available for Licensing
Amateur & Professional
Fee: Minimum Fee: $110 per performance

Restrictions: Major Markets Plus (US) / Standard Plus Add'l Postcodes (UK)

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