By The Way, Meet Vera Stark

By The Way, Meet Vera Stark is a play by Lynn Nottage. The play concerns "Vera Stark", an African-American maid who becomes a star Off-Broadway.

Nottage received the 2010 Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award for this play.

The play premiered Off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre on May 9, 2011 and closed on June 12, 2011. Directed by Jo Bonney, the cast featured Sanaa Lathan as Vera Stark, Stephanie J. Block (Gloria Mitchell), Daniel Breaker (Leroy Barksdale/Herb Forrester), David Garrison (Fredrick Slasvick/Brad Donovan), Kimberly Hebert Gregory (Lottie/Carmen Levy-Green), Kevin Isola (Maximillian Von Oster/Brian Blaze), and Karen Olivo (Anne Mae/Afua Assata Ejob). Sets are by Neil Patel and costumes by ESosa.

The play ran at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles in September 2012, directed by Jo Bonney, starring Sanaa Lathan with Amanda Detmer (Gloria).

The play was produced at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, Illinois, from April 27 to June 2, 2013.

According to Second Stage, "Lynn Nottage draws upon the screwball films of the 1930s to take a funny and irreverent look at racial stereotypes in Hollywood. 'By the Way, Meet Vera Stark' is a 70-year journey through the life of Vera Stark..., a headstrong African-American maid and budding actress, and her tangled relationship with her boss, a white Hollywood star...desperately grasping to hold on to her career."

Ben Brantley, reviewing the Off-Broadway production for The New York Times, wrote: "There are moments throughout 'Vera Stark,' directed by Jo Bonney, that provoke hearty laughter and troubling thoughts at the same time. But none of them come close to matching the fully inhabited, spiky ambivalence of Ms. Lathan as she appears in the second half.... But much of the comic material here feels stereotyped in itself, bringing to mind lively but formulaic sketch routines from satiric variety shows like “In Living Color.” As directed by Ms. Bonney, the acting swings wildly between proper characterization and caricature.... More enjoyably, the second act includes a clip from the film that Vera finally made (as imagined by Tony Gerber) and the priceless 1973 talk-show sequence, in which Mr. Garrison is perfect as a fatuous Merv Griffin-esque host."

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