Lynn Nottage’s Sweat
Introduction: pdf
Welcome to this special edition of The Lit Review, dedicated to one of the most significant plays of the 21st century: Lynn Nottage’s Sweat. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Sweat is more than a piece of theatre; it is a profound piece of social documentation. This guide will provide you with a detailed analysis of the play, breaking down its complex themes, characters, and literary techniques in a clear, academic style suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate study. We will explore the world of Reading, Pennsylvania, to understand how Nottage uses the specific to comment on the universal crises of deindustrialisation, racial tension, and the erosion of community in contemporary America.About the Author – Lynn Nottage
Lynn Nottage is not merely a playwright; she is a researcher, a social advocate, and a "theatrical historiographer" – a writer who dramatises history, particularly the histories of marginalised voices.
Pulitzer Prize Laureate: Nottage is the first and only woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: first for Ruined (2009), a play set in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and again for Sweat (2017).
Methodology: “Replacing Judgement with Curiosity”: This mantra is central to Nottage’s process. For Sweat, she and her director, Kate Whoriskey, conducted extensive interviews with residents of Reading, Pennsylvania, a city that had become one of the poorest in the United States. This immersive, empathetic research is what gives the play its authenticity and power.
Recurring Themes: Her work consistently focuses on "ordinary extraordinary women" and communities rendered invisible by mainstream narratives. She explores intersections of race, class, and gender with a deep sense of humanity and moral complexity.
Expanding the Canon: With plays like Intimate Apparel and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Nottage has secured her place as a leading voice in American theatre, challenging traditional narratives and forms.
Setting: Download
The Microcosm
A microcosm is a situation or event that represents, in miniature, the characteristics of something much larger. The bar in Sweat is a microcosm of Reading, which itself is a microcosm for the wider American Rust Belt and the collapse of industrial capitalism.
Plot Summary:
The play employs a flashback structure, beginning in 2008 in a parole officer’s office. We meet Jason, a young white man with white supremacist tattoos, and Chris, a young Black man, both recently released from prison. The central question—what crime did these once-inseparable friends commit?—propels the narrative back to the year 2000.
In 2000, we meet their mothers, Tracey (white) and Cynthia (Black), and their friend Jessie, who all work at the local steel-tubing factory, Olstead’s. Their lives revolve around their work and their post-shift gatherings at a local bar, tended by Stan, a former factory worker. The initial camaraderie is palpable, but cracks begin to show when Cynthia is promoted to a management position, creating jealousy and resentment in Tracey. Simultaneously, economic pressures mount as rumours of layoffs and the effects of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) threaten their livelihoods. When the factory officially locks out the workers, tensions explode, culminating in a violent, racially charged attack that lands Jason and Chris in prison and leaves Stan with a debilitating injury. The play returns to 2008, showing the devastating aftermath and a fragile, tentative moment of reconciliation.
Major Themes –
1. Deindustrialisation and Economic Despair
This refers to the decline in industrial activity in a region or economy, often marked by factory closures, job losses, and a shift towards a service-based economy. Nottage illustrates this through the specific policy of NAFTA, which allowed companies to move production to Mexico for cheaper labour.
The play argues that economic despair is the catalyst for the social and racial disintegration that follows. The characters’ identities are so intertwined with their jobs that losing them is akin to a loss of self.
2. Race and Class Conflict
Nottage explores how race and class are not separate issues but are deeply intertwined (a concept known as intersectionality). Under economic pressure, the characters’ latent racial prejudices surface.
The white characters, Tracey and Jason, increasingly scapegoat their Black and Latino colleagues (Cynthia and Oscar) for their misfortune, revealing how capitalism can pit the working class against itself along racial lines.
3. Nostalgia and the American Dream
Nostalgia is a sentimental longing for the past, often idealised. Nottage directly critiques this, with one character stating, "Nostalgia is a disease." The characters cling to a version of the American Dream—a secure job, a comfortable retirement—that is no longer attainable.
The play suggests that an addiction to a romanticised past prevents the characters from adapting to a changing world and finding new ways forward.
4. Fractured Togetherness
This is the play’s final, powerful phrase. It describes a state where a community is deeply divided by trauma and conflict, yet is still bound together by shared history and geography.
The ending is not a neat resolution but a realistic portrayal of the difficult, ongoing work of reconciliation. It suggests that community persists even in a state of fracture.
Character Sketches
Tracey:
Represents the entrenched white working class, proud of her family’s generational history in the town and the factory.
Her initial friendship with Cynthia curdles into bitter racism and jealousy after Cynthia’s promotion. She feels entitled to the fading American Dream and directs her anger outwards, ultimately instigating the play’s climactic violence.
Key Quote: “Do you know what it’s like to get up and have no place to go? I ain’t had the feeling ever. I’m a worker.”
Cynthia:
The aspirational figure who seeks to break the cycle of factory work.
Her promotion, a personal triumph, isolates her from her friends and places her in an impossible position between management and the workforce. She becomes a symbol of the difficult choices faced by those trying to advance.
Key Quote: “Remember, one of us has to be left standing to fight.”
Jason and Chris:
They represent the next generation and the tragedy of corrupted potential.
Their childhood friendship, which transcends race, is destroyed by the economic pressures and racist ideologies that consume their parents’ generation. Jason’s descent into white supremacy in prison is a stark indictment of a system that fails its youth.
Oscar:
The Colombian-American busboy, the silent observer who represents the new, often resented, immigrant workforce.
Initially an invisible presence, he seizes an opportunity for better pay by crossing the picket line, making him a target for the locked-out workers. He survives the violence and, significantly, is the one caring for the injured Stan at the play’s end.
Key Quote: “That’s how it oughta be.” (The play’s final line)
Stan:
The moral centre and bartender, a former factory worker injured on the job. He acts as a mediator and voice of reason.
His attempt to stop the violence results in his severe injury, making him a physical symbol of the collateral damage of hatred and economic collapse.
Literary Techniques
Docu-Drama
Explanation: A play or film that uses documentary-style techniques (interviews, news clips, a basis in real events) to tell a story. Sweat is a prime example, rooted in Nottage’s interviews with Reading residents.
Application: The news headlines projected at the start of each scene ground the personal story in the real-world political and economic context of 2000-2008.
Non-Linear Narrative
Explanation: A story that is told out of chronological order. Sweat begins in medias res (in the middle of things) in 2008, then uses a flashback to show the events leading up to the crime.
Application: This structure creates dramatic irony—the audience knows a tragic event is coming, which adds tension and poignancy to the early, seemingly joyful scenes in the bar.
Realism
Explanation: A literary and dramatic movement that seeks to represent everyday life and people as they are, without idealisation. It focuses on believable dialogue and settings.
Application: The bar setting, the naturalistic dialogue filled with working-class vernacular, and the complex, flawed characters are all hallmarks of theatrical realism, reminiscent of playwrights like Arthur Miller.
Symbolism
Explanation: The use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities.
Application:
The Bar: Symbolises community, a refuge, and eventually, the site of its destruction.
Jason’s Tattoos: Symbolise his radicalisation and the permanence of the choices he made.
The Factory Lockout: Symbolises the betrayal of the working class by corporate and political powers.
Key Excerpts
Famous Excerpt: The Confrontation with Oscar (Act 2, Scene 6)
This is the play’s violent climax. Oscar enters the bar to collect his things after taking a job at the factory. Tracey, filled with rage, provokes Jason.
TRACEY. He’s heading to cash your check. Your check. Go on, ask him. Go on. He’s gonna tell you he’s got your job.
(Chris grabs Oscar and yanks him to his feet. Tracey watches the battle, her face contorted with rage.)
STAN. Let him go!
(Stan manages to get to his feet, but it’s too late. Jason hits Oscar in the stomach with the bat... As Jason winds up for another swing, Stan tries to intervene, but the bat hits him hard in the head.)
Critical Analysis:
This excerpt is the culmination of all the play’s themes. The economic frustration (“your check”) is immediately channeled into racial violence. Tracey’s instigation highlights how prejudice is taught and encouraged. Stan’s intervention and subsequent injury symbolise the destruction of reason and compassion in the face of blind hatred. The stage directions (“face contorted with rage”) are crucial, showing the visceral, non-verbal intensity of the moment.Why is Sweat so highly regarded?
Timeliness and Timelessness: While it explains the socio-economic frustrations that led to political shifts like the election of Donald Trump, its exploration of human nature under pressure gives it a lasting relevance.
Empathy without Sentimentality: Nottage does not villainise her characters. Even Tracey is presented as a victim of larger forces, making the play a challenging and nuanced study of human behaviour.
Form and Function: The use of docu-drama and realism makes the play accessible and powerful, blending the urgency of journalism with the emotional depth of great literature.
Glossary of Key Literary and Technical Terms
Intersectionality: A theoretical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities (e.g., gender, race, class) combine to create unique modes of discrimination and privilege.
Microcosm: A community, place, or situation regarded as encapsulating in miniature the characteristics of something much larger.
Docu-Drama: A genre of drama that consists of re-enactments of actual historical events.
Non-Linear Narrative: A narrative technique where events are portrayed out of chronological order.
Realism: A mid-19th century aesthetic movement that aims to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality or artistic convention.
Symbolism: The use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities by giving them symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense.
Dramatic Irony: A literary device where the audience’s understanding of a situation surpasses that of the characters within the story.
Flashback: A scene set in a time earlier than the main story.
In Medias Res: A narrative technique of starting a story from the middle of the action.
Summary and Conclusion
Lynn Nottage’s Sweat is an essential text for understanding the contemporary American landscape. It is a masterful blend of rigorous journalism and profound empathy, a play that holds a mirror up to the economic and racial fractures of our time. By focusing on the specific stories of a group of friends in a Pennsylvania bar, Nottage creates a powerful and universal tragedy about the cost of deindustrialisation and the fragile nature of community. Its final message of "fractured togetherness" offers no easy answers, but a sobering and necessary hope for a way forward.
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