{"id":14882,"date":"2011-07-13T02:50:13","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T02:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=14882"},"modified":"2013-08-30T16:40:29","modified_gmt":"2013-08-30T16:40:29","slug":"a-new-branch-of-the-united-states%e2%80%99-miscegenated-family-tree-lynn-nottage%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cby-the-way-meet-vera-stark%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=14882","title":{"rendered":"A New Branch of the United States\u2019 Miscegenated Family Tree: Lynn Nottage\u2019s \u201cBy the Way, Meet Vera Stark\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

A New Branch of the United States\u2019 Miscegenated Family Tree: Lynn Nottage\u2019s \u201cBy the Way, Meet Vera Stark\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Feminist Wire<\/a>
\n2011-04-29<\/p>\n

Soyica Colbert<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of English
\nDartmouth College<\/em><\/p>\n

Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage<\/a>\u2019s new play By the Way, Meet Vera Stark<\/em> opened at the Second Stage Theatre<\/a> on April 6, 2011 to guffaws and robust applause. The play puts a playful twist on what Daphne Brooks<\/a> calls \u201cAmerica\u2019s miscegenated history\u201d in order to recuperate the story of a forgotten black actress. Fittingly a comedy, Nottage\u2019s play calls to mind the ongoing melodrama that is race relations in the United States. From the saga that Thomas Jefferson\u2019s<\/a> relationship with Sally Hemings<\/a> has become to the ongoing and offensive questions regarding President Barack Obama\u2019s<\/a> citizenship, the popular conversation about race seems to leap in the blink of an eye from the postracial world of the twenty-first century as Hortense Spillers<\/a> describes in her provocative piece \u201cMama\u2019s Baby, Papa\u2019s Too<\/a>\u201d to the scientific racism of the nineteenth century epitomized in a racist email Tea Party activist Marilyn Davenport sent to her constituency, picturing Obama\u2019s parents as chimpanzees.<\/p>\n

Using the temporal confusion race triggers in the twenty-first century to her dramaturgical advantage, Nottage\u2019s play, directed by Jo Bonney, shuttles the viewer seamlessly through different time periods in the twentieth century, from 1933 to 1973 to 2003. The play offers an uproarious insight into the life of Vera Stark (Sanaa Lathan), an African American woman striving to become a Hollywood<\/a> actress while working as the maid of a famous purportedly white actress Gloria Mitchell (Stephanie J. Block). By the end of a play that focuses on how the choices we make determine who we will become, we learn that Gloria is Vera\u2019s cousin and that Gloria is passing<\/a> for white. Laugh out loud funny, innovative in its staging and powerful in its organization, Nottage\u2019s new play, playfully reveals the way that U.S. racial mixtries\u2014 a term used in Langston Hughes\u2019 <\/a>Broadway play Mulatto<\/em> (1935) that communicates <\/em>mixtures that are mysteries\u2014create lines of contentious affiliation among women…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A New Branch of the United States\u2019 Miscegenated Family Tree: Lynn Nottage\u2019s \u201cBy the Way, Meet Vera Stark\u201d The Feminist Wire 2011-04-29 Soyica Colbert, Assistant Professor of English Dartmouth College Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage\u2019s new play By the Way, Meet Vera Stark opened at the Second Stage Theatre on April 6, 2011 to guffaws […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,6462,20,25],"tags":[6854,6851,6852,6853,6846],"class_list":["post-14882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","category-women","tag-lynn-nottage","tag-soyica-colbert","tag-soyica-d-colbert","tag-soyica-diggs-colbert","tag-the-feminist-wire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}