Cast Announced for Lynn Nottage's INTIMATE APPAREL at Shakespeare & Company

Shakespeare & Company presents Intimate Apparel, written by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage and directed by long-time company member Daniela Varon.

This winner of the 2004 Steinberg New Play Award, New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award runs in the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre from July 20 through August 13, 2017.

"It is a dream for me to direct Intimate Apparel at Shakespeare & Company," said Director Daniela Varon. "Lynn Nottage, one of our preeminent American Playwrights, has built an extraordinary, richly varied body of work giving voice to the unheard, the unseen, and the marginalized."

In Intimate Apparel, Nottage explores the strength of the human spirit through the story of Esther, an African-American seamstress in Manhattan in 1905, when social and class lines were distinctly drawn. A letter arrives, romance and betrayal follow, and six lives are forever changed.

Intimate Apparel features veteran Shakespeare & Company members Nehassaiu deGannes and ChristiAnna Nelson alongside MaConnia Chesser, and introduces Lee Edward Colston II, Tommy Schrider, and Medina Senghore to Shakespeare & Company audiences.

The creative team includes James W. Bilnoski (Lighting Designer), Sandra Goldmark (Set Designer), Molly Trainer (Costume Designer), Christopher Peifer (Sound Designer), Natalie Johnsonius Neubert (Projection Designer), and Scott Killian (Composer/Music Director).

Tickets for Intimate Apparel are available online at shakespeare.org, or by calling Shakespeare & Company's box office at (413) 637-3353. The Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre is air-conditioned and wheelchair accessible. Shakespeare & Company is located at 70 Kemble Street in Lenox, Massachusetts. This production is generously sponsored by The Claudia and Steven Perles Family Foundation.

About Daniela Varon
(Director, Intimate Apparel). S&Co: Director, Ugly Lies The Bone, Red Velvet, Shakespeare's Will, Romeo & Juliet, Sea Marks, Martha Mitchell Calling, Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, Love Letters, Collected Stories, Winter's Tale, Wit, Room of One's Own, Turn of the Screw. New York: Abingdon; Culture Project; EST; HERE; Joe's Pub; Lincoln Center Theater Directors' Lab; Mud/Bone; the Public; Shakespeare Society; Symphony Space; Vineyard Theatre. Regional: Boston Playwrights'; Connecticut Rep; LA Women's Shakespeare; Sun Valley Shakespeare; Tygre's Heart Shakespeare; Vineyard Playhouse; Wharton Salon. Co-founder: The Company of Women; Co-creator: Conversations with Shakespeare; Founding Faculty: The Linklater Center; Drama League Fellow; NYTW Usual Suspect.

About Lynn Nottage
(Playwright, Intimate Apparel). Lynn Nottage is a playwright from Brooklyn. Her plays have been produced on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regionally, and include Sweat (Pulitzer Prize, OBIE Award, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Tony Nomination, Drama Desk Nomination); By The Way, Meet Vera Stark (Lilly Award); Ruined (Pulitzer Prize, OBIE, Lucille Lortel, Audelco, Drama Desk, NY Critics' Circle, Outer Critics' Circle Awards); Fabulation (OBIE Award); Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone (Blackburn Prize finalist); Por'Knockers; Crumbs From The Table of Joy; and Poof! (Heideman Award). Ms. Nottage has received the Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Laura Pels Award, the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, the AT&T Onstage Award, the Doris Duke Award, the MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship, the Horton Foote Award, the Helen Hayes Award, the August Wilson Playwriting Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA/TCG grant, among many other awards and honors. She is a Residency One Playwright for the 2018-19 season at the Signature Theatre Company, and an Associate Professor at Columbia School of the Arts. She is a member of New Dramatists and a graduate oF Brown University and Yale School of Drama.

About Shakespeare & Company
Located in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, Shakespeare & Company is one of the largest Shakespeare Festivals in the country. Founded in 1978, the organization attracts over 30,000 patrons annually. The Company is also home to Shakespeare & Company's internationally renowned Center for Actor Training and nationally renowned and award-winning Education Program. More information is available at www.shakespeare.org.