By the Way, Meet Vera Stark
Playwrights Canada Press · Print & ebook · October 15, 2013
A Plays pick for readers exploring By the Way, Meet Vera Stark.
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- Who it’s for
- A playful theatrical lens on Hollywood’s racial stereotypes, with film and video woven into the writing.
- Themes
- Racial stereotyping in entertainment, Black actors in 1930s Hollywood, Hollywood career and power dynamics
- Genres
- African American Plays, American Plays, Historical Drama
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Matched by what the books are about, then ordered by what their readers also loved. Most of these share its genres: African American Plays and American Plays.
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For younger readers: What I Must Tell the World, Echo After Echo, The Silver Blonde
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Start with this bookAbout this book
In her first new play since the critically acclaimed Ruined, Lynn Nottage examines the legacy of African Americans in Hollywood in a dramatic stylistic departure from her previous work. Fluidly incorporating film and video elements into her writing for the first time, Nottage's comedy tells the story of Vera Stark, an African American maid and budding actress who has a tangled relationship with her boss, a white Hollywood star desperately grasping to hold onto her career.
Continue reading
Stirring audiences out of complacency by tackling racial stereotyping in the entertainment industry, Nottage highlights the paradox of black actors in 1930s Hollywood while jumping back and forward in time and location in this uniquely theatrical narrative. By the Way, Meet Vera Stark premiered in New York in 2011 and received subsequent productions at Los Angeles's Geffen Playhouse in fall 2012 and Chicago's Goodman Theatre and The Lyric Stage Company of Boston in spring 2013.
Stage and Screen
A playful theatrical lens on Hollywood’s racial stereotypes, with film and video woven into the writing.
Come here for
- Theater that takes on Hollywood’s treatment of Black actors
- A comedy with a sharp eye for racial stereotyping
Expect
- A narrative that jumps through time and location
- Film and video elements in a theatrical work
Where it sits
| African American Plays | 88% |
|---|---|
| American Plays | 37% |
| Historical Drama | 33% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- African American Plays
- Plays by Women
- Authors
- Lynn Nottage
- Publisher
- Playwrights Canada Press
- Published
- October 15, 2013
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Racial stereotyping in entertainment · Black actors in 1930s Hollywood · Hollywood career and power dynamics
- Reading lane
- African American Plays