Be Boyd, an associate professor in the theater department of Orlando’s University of Central Florida, teaches the plays of two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage, but has yet to stage one of her plays professionally.
That is until now, when she directs Intimate Apparel at Palm Beach Dramaworks, opening Friday, April 1.
She eagerly agreed to the assignment, calling the play “a stunningly thorough and nuanced piece. It’s such an incredible history lesson, with an understanding of how we are all interwoven in our lives, even if we don’t know it.”
Set at the turn of the 20th century, Intimate Apparel centers on Esther, an ambitious but lonely African-American woman in her mid-30s, based on Nottage’s own great-grandmother. She moves to New York to pursue a career as a seamstress, sewing lingerie for clients ranging from wealthy white women to black prostitutes. Longing for romance, she begins increasingly intimate correspondence with George Armstrong, a Caribbean laborer working on the Panama Canal. Sight unseen, George proposes marriage to Esther, but when he eventually shows up on her doorstep, he is not what his letters purported him to be.
Playing Esther will be Rita Cole, who was a student of Boyd’s at UCF some 15 years ago. “I graduated college in 2007 and I had not seen her since,” notes the actress. “I am beyond excited,” she says about making her Dramaworks debut as well as appearing in her first Nottage play.
Recalling when the company’s producing artistic director William Hayes contacted her, asking if she would be interested in the role, Cole says, “In my brain I’m going, ‘Are you kidding me? That’s like asking me do I like breathing.’ Of course I’m interested.”
Boyd says she is drawn to Nottage’s writing because “her language is so poetical and inspiring. I love her characters. I think they’re really rich and funny and sad. They’re layered. She’s got her finger on the pulse of humanity in a way that not a lot of people have.” In Intimate Apparel, “each moment is really important and filled with something that is so connected to something else that’s going to happen. So I love digging into it and finding out more about these people.”
George Armstrong will be performed by Jovon Jacobs, previously seen at Dramaworks in August Wilson’s Fences. He too is taken with Nottage’s way with words, saying, “What stood out to me was how diverse this play is. These characters come from all different backgrounds and religions. I found that very interesting, hearing the stories of these people. At you watch the play, you come to realize that although we all have these different experiences and backgrounds, we all have insecurities, we all have hopes and similar dreams. I found that really beautiful.”
Cole’s initial reaction to Esther was that she is vastly different from herself. “Esther is 35 and I am 36. Initially I thought that was all we had in common. But as I’m rehearsing this play and peeling back the layers of the role, I am finding out that I am more and more like Esther than I thought,” she says. “Although she is strong and business-oriented and knows what she wants, she doesn’t always know how to achieve it, like other women can when it comes to relationships and love. So I’ll bet there’s a lot of Esther in a lot of women, not just me.
“I see Esther as a very successful, goal-oriented black woman, who has this dream of opening her own business,” explains Cole. “And during those times that was laughable in society. But I love the fact that she’s going against the grain. And she was smart enough to save up her money while doing it, so that she could achieve a bigger dream. The only challenge is she doesn’t have someone to share that with. That is what she wants and she feels that at her age it might be a lost opportunity.”
Boyd feels strongly that the Dramaworks audience will have a visceral reaction to Intimate Apparel. “Oh, I think that they will love it,” she says. “What I hope is that they’ll not only fall in love with the play, but that they’ll fall in love with Lynn Nottage and her ability to help you understand characters by detailing history. Because it really is a great history lesson. And the way she drops pieces of information in there that is very natural and necessary to the storytelling is really remarkable.
“I think that they’re going to be so engaged in the storytelling and the acting and the way she gives us the history lesson of what happened at the turn of the 20th century. All of a sudden there was all this opportunity of change at that particular time. There was so much prosperity, but there was also a lot of fear, a lot of hope and a lot of dreaming.
“And she draws those parallels to today. So many themes in the play are things that we’re still struggling with as human beings,” says Boyd. “One of the biggest reasons people will fall in love with it and be engaged with it is that people will be able to see themselves in these characters. And see their grandparents or their great grandparents.”
INTIMATE APPAREL, Palm Beach Dramaworks, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach. From Friday, April 1–Sunday, April 17. $79. Call 561-514-4042 or visit www.palmbeachdramaworks.org.