LYNN NOTTAGE wrote her sizzling new play Sweat three years ago on a commission from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. There are moments when artists such as Nottage write at the height of their powers and seem to prophesy about the life of humanity. Certainly Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman or Tony Kushner’s Angels in America accomplished such prophetic feats, and it’s not a stretch to say that Nottage’s Sweat could do the same. Set in the Rust Belt of the United States, with the decline of manufacturing jobs reeling out of control, Sweat may be the timeliest play of this New York theater season, opening March 4 on Broadway, at Studio 54.
Nottage got the idea to write the play after hearing that Reading, Pa., is one of the most impoverished towns in the U.S. We witness on stage the birth of Trump’s America, rife with economic hardship in a community that is doing all it can to hang on to its identity, and losing it at every turn.
This pressing drama is set between the years 2000 and 2008, shifting back and forth in time to reveal just how the devastating economic hardships of the 21st century were taking hold. Most of the scenes are set in the town’s local watering hole, where we witness the local culture, friendships breaking down, and a serious hate crime that lands two of the characters in jail. We follow these two directionless young men who are seeking a life that yields more than just another job. We also follow a trio of female friends who have supported one another through it all on the factory floor and in the intimacies of life.
The opening scene is set in 2008, with the two former friends, Jason and Chris, facing interrogation at the hands of their parole officer. We don’t understand what’s happened to them, but as we puzzle through their relationship, going back in time to 2000, we learn painful truths of factory life in America. In the desperation of this play, we witness the characters get drunker and drunker to drown out the rage-laden loss they feel as their jobs are either mechanized or moved offshore. And while we watch this, we find ourselves sobering up to a recession-laden United States.
The play includes nine characters, all natives of Reading, all locating their identities deep in the community. Nottage identifies them in her script by their ethnic identities, ranging from German American to African American, but America is at their core. They believe in their union, and in their company, as though it’s one of their dearest friends. And when that company betrays them, it’s a divorce as painful as any human relationship.
Director Kate Whoriskey’s compelling, naturalistic staging and the slice-of-life details of the acting make us into voyeurs peering into a reality we need to understand. How else might we explain the incredible divisions facing the nation now? With all her creative, truth-telling power, Nottage uncovers how such divisions happen and how the ground was laid for a Trump presidency. We owe it to ourselves to see this play, to swallow its lessons and carry them with a newfound empathy into the lives we lead.
Stephanie Sandberg is an assistant professor of theater and film studies at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. Her most recent work is Stories in Blue: A Pilgrimage to Heal Human Trafficking, which follows the stories of six survivors of sex trafficking.
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