America Never Was America to Me In 2011, Lynn Nottage read a New York Times article that declared that Reading, Pennsylvania—a struggling city of 88,000—had edged out Flint, Michigan to become the US city with the largest percentage of its residents living in poverty (41.3%). Having been commissioned to write a play about an American revolution, Nottage chose what she called “the biggest shift in American sensibilities since the nineteensixties”: the de-industrial revolution. Between 2000 and 2010, U.S. manufacturing saw a loss of 5 million jobs, sending 14.76 million Americans into poverty. Nottage traveled to Reading and spent over two years conducting interviews with its residents. Her motto for the research was: “Replace judgment with curiosity.” At face value, Sweat tells the story of one American city’s struggles with the ramifications of a faltering US economy, declining manufacturing industry, and changing demographics. Yet, while Sweat finds its specific location in the city of Reading, it is, at its core, a portrait of the country as a whole—its cities, factories, unions, homes, schools, families. Sweat holds a mirror to the face of America as it is and as it always has been. It reflects our country’s resilience, fight, and faith, yes, but also its fears, rage, entitlement, white supremacy, systemic oppression, and thus, its decline. In highlighting these complexities, Nottage forces us to confront whether, and for whom, the so-called American Dream has ever been a reality.
SWEAT
Nottage’s play mines the contradictions at the root of America—a nation predicated on the notion of justice for all and at the same time a nation forged through the genocide of the continent’s native peoples and enriched through enslaved labor and systemic racism. We often hear that we are living in a time of unprecedented polarization in America; yet this polarization is woven into the very fabric from which this country is stitched together. From this premise, and in a call to unified action, Nottage starts her play with the words of prominent Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes:
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain— All, all the stretch of these great green states— And make America again!
Thursday, September 28 at 4PM Friday, September 29 at 3:30PM and 8PM Saturday, September 30 at 4PM Iseman Theater, 1156 Chapel Street
—SOPHIE SIEGEL-WARREN, PRODUCTION DRAMATURG The Studio Series productions are designed to be learning experiences that complement classroom work, providing a medium for students at Yale School of Drama to combine their individual talents and energies toward the staging of collaboratively created works. Your attendance meaningfully completes this process.
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