Page 6
January 22, 2020
Mississippi
Alberta
North Portland
Vancouver
East County
Beaverton
Humanity Shines in ‘Sweat’
o PinionAted
J udge
by
d arleen
o rtega
A timely insight
into today’s
economic woes
Portland folks have the opportunity to
see Profile Theater’s first-rate production
of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning
play “Sweat” through Feb. 2 at Imago The-
ater. The play’s insights could not be more
timely, or more resonant.
To prepare to write the play, Lynn Not-
tage spent many months listening to the
people of Reading, Penn., a formerly
thriving industrial city which, by 2011,
had been identified as one of the poorest
cities in America. She was drawn there
because the city, with its diverse popula-
tion, is a prime example of the decline of
American industry. The play first opened
in 2015 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festi-
val, a year before Trump’s election--and
by the time it opened on Broadway in
2017, the Trump election had happened,
and it seemed like Nottage, an African
American, had noticed things that every-
one else had missed.
And yet it still appears that people may
be missing what Nottage noticed. The nar-
rative about Trump’s election was (and, to
some degree, continues to be) that “work-
ing class” people had been left behind and
lashed out, seeing Trump as the answer to
their economic woes. But “working class”
is generally taken to mean white people;
the effects of the economy on black, indig-
enous, and people of color does not evoke
the same collective curiosity and attention,
limited though that collective curiosity and
attention may be.
But Nottage listened well--and this pro-
duction invites us to listen well too. The
play, which jumps back and forth in time
between 2000 and 2008, tells the story of a
group of steelworker friends who regularly
gather in a bar run by Stan (Duffy Epstein),
whose own career as a steelworker was
cut short by a disabling accident. Tracey
(Linda Hayden), Jessie (Alissa Jessup),
and Cynthia (Cycerli Ash) all have been
at the work long enough by 2000 that they
photo by d avid k inder /C ourtesy i Mago t heater
Cynthia (Cycerli Ash) struggles with the loss of good paying factory jobs and the effects of company management decisions
in ‘Sweat,’ a Pulitzer-Prize winning play by African-American playwright Lynn Nottage, now playing through Feb. 2 at Imago
Theater, 17 S.E. Eighth Ave.
are feeling it in their middle-aged bodies;
Jason (Jim Vadala) and Chris (La’Tevin
Alexander), the sons of Tracey and Cyn-
thia respectively, are just starting out, and
factory work seems the most obvious and
really only option for a comfortable life.
By 2008 (when the play’s opening
scenes are set), it’s clear that things have
unraveled, and Jason and Chris have been
released from prison. Most of the action
takes place eight years earlier, as the char-
acters experience the unraveling of the
livelihood they had all counted on and we
come to learn about a final violent conflict
that changed all their lives.
As envisioned by Nottage, expertly re-
alized by director Christopher Acebo, and
beautifully played by this excellent cast,
the decline of these characters feels both
emblematic and very specific. All the char-
acters have union jobs, yet the white char-
acters, particularly Tracey and Jason, speak
from a sense of entitlement that the black
characters don’t quite share; Tracey and
Jason carry a sense of legacy, and speak of
the generations that their family members
toiled in this industry as though it creates
a sort of compact. A good union wage and
benefits is simply their due, what they are
owed for decades of work and sacrifice.
The black characters (Cynthia and
Chris) are union members too, but they
speak as later entrants to the club; it doesn’t
occur to their white friends to wonder why
they lack the same legacy of generations
of union toil. Cynthia and Chris are still
aspiring, looking for ways to climb, even
exploring other options. It is Cynthia who
first decides to apply for an open manage-
ment job; Tracey only considers it when
Cynthia encourages her to apply.
Once Cynthia is awarded the job, their
friendship begins to fracture. Tracey re-
sents her, and she and Jessie quickly blame
Cynthia for failing to prevent increasingly
harsh measures imposed by management.
C ontinued on p age 11