In the play Intimate Apparel, Lynn Nottage explores the issue of race and the sense of woman’s worth. The reader explores these themes in a different way then normal. There are no narrators when you read plays. A play reads as one would see it on stage.
Lynn Nottage opens the play with
“Wedding corset. White satin with pink roses
Lower Manhattan, 1905
A bedroom. It is simple, unadorned with the exception of beautifully embroidered curtains and a colorful crazy quilt.
A clumsy ragtime melody bleeds in from the parlor. In the distance the sound of laughter and general merriment.
Esther, a rather plain African American woman (35) sits at a sewing machine table diligently trimming a camisole with lace. She is all focus and determination.”
This provides the reader with the description of the opening scene of the act. It tells us that the setting is in 1905, in Lower Manhattan. The characters are in a bedroom. with beautiful curtains and a colorful quilt. We are then introduced to Esther. Who is a plan African American woman of 35. Who is sewing at a sewing table.
“MRS. DICKSON
(O. S.) Don’t be fresh, Lionel. I know your Mama since before the war.
Mrs. Dickson (50), a handsome impeccably groomed African-American woman, enters laughing.”
This is the first quote from the dialogue. We find that the character speaking is Mrs Dickson and she is 50 and a African American as well. This differs from your traditional narrator because the narrator would be describing all this to the reader as she is a character his or her self. Here in the play it just feels like there is no narrator.
