NOTE: The articles in these study guides are not meant to mirror or interpret any particular productions at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. They are meant, instead, to be an educational jumping-off point to understanding and enjoying the play (in any production at any theatre) a bit more thoroughly. Therefore the stories of the plays and the interpretative articles (and even characters at times) may differ from what is ultimately produced on stage.
Also, some of these articles (especially the synopses) reveal the ending and other “surprises” in some plays. If you don’t want to know this information before seeing the plays, you may want to reconsider studying this information.
By Sam White
Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel stitches Esther’s story of promise, despair, love, and disappointment together into a beautiful and heartbreaking bow of yesteryear’s and today’s reality for many Black women.
Although the story is fictional and set in the early 1900s, it is a narrative that still resonates with BIPOC women across this nation who often have to sacrifice so much in an effort to survive—many of whom have sacrificed their dreams, or as Esther says in the second scene of the play: “I stopped work and all this time had passed, gone. Years really. And I known right there that some things ain’t meant to be.”
Stories like Esther’s have been playing out privately in the lives of Black women in this country since 1619 when the first group of enslaved people came to this continent—enslaved as were Esther’s ancestors and parents. She says: “My parents were chattel . . . born to children of chattel.” All of these women, and men, had dreams and lives ahead of them that were unjustly stripped away. Some of these stories have been told but most will never be heard or shared.
For that reason, 2020 was a reckoning, for those who had never heard stories like these before, whether by choice or ignorance. Watching Black women’s stories like Breonna Taylor jolted the social consciousness for many whose busy, privileged lives were quarantined by the coronavirus; and they could no longer look away.
A young, Black woman who worked a job helping others as a first responder was shot dead in her own home. And because her young life was brought to a halt, Breonna will never fulfill all of her dreams. She will never be married. She will never have children. She will never see her full potential.
In Esther’s case, the same hierarchical system that impacted Breonna, Sandra Bland, and most Black women in America, impacted her. This is why she dreamed of owning her own beauty parlor where she could make other Black women feel beautiful and pampered because as she says: “’Cause no one does it for us. We just as soon wash our heads in a bucket and be treated like mules.”
There have been so many Black women who have created beautiful, innovative things that positively impact us all: Alice H. Parker who is responsible for the natural gas furnaces in most of our homes, Lyda D. Newman whose hairbrush technology changed the face of grooming, and so many more. These everyday inventions that have improved the quality of life for people and these Black inventors’ names don’t necessarily resonate in our country’s historical memory such as the names of Thomas Jefferson or Henry Ford.
The miracle of all of this heavy weight that lives on the backs of Black women is they still find ways to love—to give it, to receive it, to spread it, and to be it. And because they are nuanced and human, sometimes the places and people they share their love with, such as the character George, isn’t the healthiest or safest. Esther’s reasons for choosing George are also mainly because the same systems impact her personal life. And society will not allow her to be with the man who her heart has clearly chosen, Mr. Marks. But the fact that she, and so many women in real life, dare to love at all in a world that doesn’t always love them is the greatest proof that perhaps the fabric in which they were made is of the finest elements ever tailored.
The fact that they continue to impact and change the scope of the United States of America, from Kamala Harris becoming the first Black woman to serve her country as vice president to Stacey Abrams changing the face of Georgia politics. No matter what party you vote for, the power and dynamism of Black women deserves its credit because it is due, long overdue.
In the end, the quilt of this country is much like the one that Esther used to hold her life savings. Much of what Black women have contributed and earned gets taken or given to perhaps those who don’t reciprocate the same commitment and compassion. But they will continue to exist and work in their respective places in the world—for Esther it was her sewing machine—and dream and try, strive and thrive because they deserve it.
The intimacy of this play is not the apparel, it is the gorgeous storytelling of Black women’s humanity.
