Intimate Apparel at DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

This 2003 play is set in Lower Manhattan at the dawn of the 20th century. Esther Mills, a black seamstress, lives in a boarding house for women and sews intimate apparel for clients who range from socialites to prostitutes. Over time, she has watched the other women in the boarding house marry and move away, but Esther remains. She plans to find the right man and use her savings to open a beauty parlor for black women. When she begins to receive letters from a Caribbean man named George who is working on the Panama Canal, she wonders if he could be that man. In this sensitive play, Nottage creates a world inhabited by lonely people in search of meaning.