Lynn Nottage: Unexpected Optimist

Notes from America with Kai Wright

WNYC Studios

News Commentary, Politics, History, News

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 January 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage (Ruined, Sweat, Clyde’s) breaks down her remarkable career and shares how, as an optimist at heart, she finds the light and resilience in unexpected stories. Plus, she tells host Kai Wright about her hopes for the future of theater and her interest in making the medium accessible and meeting people where they are. Companion listening for this episode: Can America Be Redeemed? (7/5/2021) Eddie Glaude and Imani Perry consider the question through the work of James Baldwin and Richard Wright. Plus: How our country could enter a period of “post-traumatic growth.” “The United States of Anxiety” airs live on Sunday evenings at 6pm ET. The podcast episodes are lightly edited from our live broadcasts. To catch all the action, tune into the show on Sunday nights via the stream on WNYC.org/anxiety or tell your smart speakers to play WNYC. We want to hear from you! Connect with us on Twitter @WNYC using the hashtag #USofAnxiety or email us at anxiety@wnyc.org.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Would you consider yourself a naturally optimistic person?
0:04.0	I'm a pretty optimistic person.
0:06.0	I would definitely consider myself an optimist.
0:08.0	Just to know that how many things need to go right for a human person to wake up, communicate, go through the day.
0:15.0	I'm very optimistic, yeah?
0:17.0	Not at all, actually, no.
0:19.0	Are you feeling optimistic going into this new year at all?
0:22.0	I was.
0:23.2	Everything was good until the past month.
0:26.1	But then, you know, with COVID, that has been scary
0:28.9	because I was supposed to go back home
0:31.1	and I have been home for about two years now Pakistan it's just
0:36.3	insane to not be able to see your family and just live an alone life yeah I'm
0:41.4	hopeful the new year just Just like going through 2020, 2021, how bad the past few years have been relative to the
0:48.0	rest of my life, I feel like this is just more of a reason to be extra optimistic for
0:52.0	2022.
0:53.0	Welcome to the show, I'm Kai Wright and happy New Year.
1:01.0	I am so excited to begin the year in our show
1:05.1	with the conversation we've got tonight.
1:07.8	Lynn Nightage is the only woman to win
1:10.1	two Pulitzer Prizes for playwriting, which is a sad fact actually, but nonetheless a statement about the way her work forces you to sit up and pay attention.
1:21.0	She is as much a journalist as a playwright, chronicling the American experience and focusing
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