Intimate Apparel, May 20-23

Knox College will present "Intimate Apparel," by Lynn Nottage, at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 20 through Saturday, May 23, in Harbach Theatre, Ford Center for the Fine Arts, on the Knox campus in Galesburg, Illinois. The May 23 performance will be American Sign Language interpreted. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for senior citizens, and free for students.

"'Intimate Apparel' is the story of African-American seamstresses in New York City of the early 1900s," said the director, Kelly Lynn Hogan, visiting instructor in theatre. "The protagonist is a fictional seamstress who creates exquisite lingerie. She works for wealthy socialites and ladies of the brothel alike, and unwittingly challenges the sexual, racial and class-based taboos of the age."

Lynn Nottage's play is based on archival research and her own family history, Hogan said. "Lynn Nottage's grandmother was a seamstress who made intimate apparel for courtesans and socialites alike. And her grandmother learned the craft from another African American woman."

The play tells the story of Esther, who has migrated from South Carolina to New York after her slave parents died. "The theme of the play is Esther's journey into self-actualization," Hogan says.

"In New York, Esther takes upon herself the enterprise of learning a skill -- a seamstress who makes intimate apparel for both courtesans and socialites," Hogan says. "Esther saves money toward a dream of opening a beauty parlor. Before she is able to realize that dream she invests in another one. That other dream is the prospect of what she believes to be true love with a man, George, that she has met only through a correspondence -- who turns out to have his own dream of being an entrepreneur."

The original script called for six actors, four of whom are African American -- three women and one man. "In addition to those four, I have cast three African American women as 'shadow dancers' who depict aspects of Esther that she is initially unable to express," Hogan says. "Also, I have cast two African American males as George -- because the George we see in the first act, the creation of Esther's correspondence, is not the George who arrives in New York and becomes her husband."

Hogan is a visiting instructor in theatre who has won critical acclaim for her acting in Chicago. A 1992 Knox graduate with honors in English writing and theatre, Hogan has a master's in performance studies from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.