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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 30, 2015)
Page 28 September 30, 2015 Minority & Small Business Week $UWV ENTERTAINMENT Feeling the Punch O PINIONATED J UDGE J UDGE D ARLEEN O RTEGA BY Working class upheaval on the Ashland stage It often takes a generation or more before we can grapple very honestly with our most compli- cated stories, especially if they involve people at the margins, or people who aren’t in a position to control the dominant narrative. It takes even longer if the margin- alized are the protagonists of the story. Think of how long it took, for example, for someone to make DIHDWXUH¿OPZLWK0DUWLQ/XWKHU King Jr. as its protagonist; how much longer will it be before we EHJLQWRVHHPRUHSOD\VDQG¿OPV that delve honestly into the experi- ences of, say, black schoolchildren in the segregated South, or undoc- umented immigrants in the era of fences at the U.S. border? In many ways, we are still in the middle of the so-called eco- nomic restructuring at the cen- ter of “Sweat,” Lynn Nottage’s new play currently experiencing its world premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland -- and that is part of why it feels so bold. Commissioned as part of OSF’s American Revolutions program, supporting new plays that focus on moments of change in American history, “Sweat” is set in the rust-belt community of Reading, Penn., formerly a man- ufacturing stronghold where a union card was the ticket to a solid PHOTO BY J ENNY G RAHAM Stephen Michael Spencer(from left), Jack Willis and Tramell Tillman perform in ‘Sweat,’ a dramatic new play that centers on the upheav- al that comes to a union town when working class jobs disappear because of new economic realities. ‘Sweat” runs through the month of October at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. living and middle-class respect, however modest. Now, however, Reading is one of the very poorest cities in America, with more than 40 percent of its residents living below the poverty line in the af- termath of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). “Sweat” explores some of how that transformation has been expe- rienced by working class people, whose lives have changed course dramatically. The play is constructed around an ensemble cast -- three mid- dle-aged women who have worked in a particular factory for more than 20 years; the sons of two of the women, beginning what they fully expect will be the basis for a solid living if they want it; a bar- tender who worked for decades in the same factory before becoming injured on the job; a man who has been locked out of his factory job for an extended period; a proba- WLRQRI¿FHUDQGD\RXQJPDQZKR hasn’t been able to break into the union. The play moves back and forth in time between 2008, after two of the characters have served time in prison, and 2000, before all of the characters felt the impact of the NAFTA shifts. Like many Americans, I have a passing awareness of economic upheaval over the past 15 years or so, as manufacturing jobs have Gregory Washington Licensed Principal Broker in Oregon LIVING ROOM REALTY 1401 NE Alberta St. Portland, OR 97211 503.422.6299 Sweet Street Food Cart New location 15th and Alberta call 503-995-6150 to place order Mon. - Fri., 11:00am - 7:00pm • Sat. - Sun., 11:00am - 5:00pm Wednesday Special: 3 Wings $2.00 Friday Special: Rib Sandwich, Beef or Pork, $4.00 increasingly moved overseas. But WKHVSHFL¿FVKDYHODUJHO\HVFDSHG PHWKH\DUHGH¿QLWHO\QRWWKHIR- cus of the dominant news stories. Nottage’s new play goes there -- and not from the vantage point of folks with any say in such matters. Having spent two years engag- ing with members of the Reading community, Nottage has built a story around characters who begin (mostly) as friends, and end up at odds -- but like the rotating set of this play, she circles these sto- ries. The play’s movement swirls like a cyclone; in the beginning we know things went bad but we don’t know how and don’t under- stand the relationships between these characters. As we swirl back and forth in time and through the shock of lock-outs and increasing- ly draconian moves from manage- ment, we get a sense of the crisis FORVLQJLQ:KHQZH¿QDOO\UHDFK WKH FRQÀLFW WKDW FKDQJHV WKH OLIH trajectory of several of these char- acters, we almost feel the punches ourselves. One of the things I most ap- preciate about this play is that the characters occupy no one position. 7RR RIWHQ LQ ¿OPV DQG WHOHYLVLRQ C ONTINUED ON P AGE 30
