[5] While in high school, she wrote her first full-length play, The Darker Side of Verona, about an African-American Shakespeare company traveling through the South.

In 1905 New York, Esther, a Black seamstress, lives in a boarding house for women, and sews intimate apparel for clients who range from wealthy white patrons to prostitutes.

On May 13, 2009, Nottage spoke at a public reception in Washington, D.C. following a United States Senate Foreign Relations joint subcommittee hearing entitled "Confronting Rape and Other Forms of Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones," with case studies on the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan.

[11] On October 12, 2009, Nottage spoke at the United Nations as part of the Exhibit CONGO/WOMEN Portraits of War: The Democratic Republic of Congo.

When both women land roles in the same Southern epic, the story behind the camera leaves Vera with a surprising and controversial legacy.

[15] Sweat tells the story of a group of friends who have spent their lives sharing drinks, secrets, and laughs while working together on the factory floor.

But when layoffs and picket lines begin to chip away at their trust, the friends find themselves pitted against each other in a heart-wrenching fight to stay afloat.

The play that she wrote as a result, Sweat, was presented at the festival in Ashland, Oregon from July 29, 2015, to October 31, 2015, directed by Kate Whoriskey.

was also recorded for podcast and public radio by Playing on Air, with a cast that featured Audra McDonald, Tonya Pinkins, and Keith Randolph Smith with direction by Seret Scott.

It follows the true story of Queen Maria Theresa of Spain (wife of Louis XIV) and her affair with her African servant, Nabo, a dwarf from Dahomey.

Obie Award-winning Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine (her companion piece to Intimate Apparel, set one hundred years later), opened Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in June 2004.

[39] Her play Mlima's Tale premiered Off-Broadway at The Public Theater on March 27, 2018, in previews, officially on April 15 in a limited engagement to May 20.

The musical is directed by Sam Gold and featured Saycon Sengbloh as Rosaleen, Elizabeth Teeter as Lily, LaChanze, Eisa Davis and Anastacia McCleskey.

Nottage contributed to the "dance-theatre musical" written Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens titled In Your Arms which premiered at the Old Globe Theatre, San Diego, in September 2015.

[49] This site-specific multimedia installation blended live performance and visual media, occupying the Franklin Street Railroad Station in Downtown Reading in May 2017, re-animating the long vacant building.

This Is Reading was conceived by Nottage, and co-created by an award-winning team of artists, including filmmaker Tony Gerber, director Kate Whoriskey and Choreographer Rennie Harris.

The Guardian noted: "Nottage's two decades of work has garnered praise for bringing challenging and often forgotten, stories onto the stage.

Ruined explored the use of rape as a weapon against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, while Intimate Apparel focused on a lonely Black seamstress working in New York in 1905... Future areas the 51-year-old is keen to explore in her plays includes the American prison industrial complex, which is "destroying the lives of so many men of colour" but is barely talked about in the national conversation or on the stage.

Yet Nottage also expressed disappointment that her work was constantly defined by both her own race and gender, unlike her white male counterparts.