One of the first people you see while watching a production of "Sweat" is a man with a swastika tattooed on his face sitting at a parole office with a black eye.
The story doesn't get any lighter from there. In fact, the tension escalates until a breaking point changes the story entirely.
"Sweat" recently debuted at Fulton Theatre as part of the Ellen Arnold Groff Studio Series. The Pulitzer Prize winning play runs through April 24.
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage, whose works include “Sweat” and “Ruined,” visited the Fulton Sunday to talk to an invitation-only group of around 100 people about her background and the inspiration behind the play.
Attendees included the cast of "Sweat," which had just finished its performance half an hour before, as well as some of the cast of "Smokey Joe's Cafe," the Fulton's mainstage play that debuts Thursday, local theater professors, former Lancaster city mayor J. Richard Gray and Lancaster city council president Ismail Smith-Wade-El.
When Nottage walked to the front of Castagna Hall, she was met with roaring applause and a standing ovation.
Kevin Ressler, president of the United Way of Lancaster County, moderated the event and interviewed Nottage. Ressler says he fell in love with theater when he saw a production of "Man of La Mancha" for the first time, and then felt represented when he saw a performance of "Othello."
Ressler, beaming, told Nottage, "We are honored with your presence."
Nottage launched into her love for storytelling, citing how her mother was a teacher and would often have other women teachers sitting at the kitchen table, talking about what ails them. She was inspired by oral storytelling, so she began to write performances for her and her little brother to perform.
Nottage didn't always know she wanted to be a playwright, she says, though she was involved in many theater-adjacent projects growing up. She was accepted into a mentorship program, where she was mentored in composition as a piano player. She says realized she was much more of a storyteller than a composer.
Like most writers and artists, Nottage says she struggles with the tension between grandiosity and despair when writing her stories. But, winning two Pulitzer Prizes for drama is validating, Nottage says.
"(It gives a) dollop of validation," Nottage says. "Suddenly, I have this national platform."
Nottage says the awards made no change to who she was as a person, but changed who she was as an artist. Suddenly, she could write with a larger audience in mind.
"Sweat" came about while Nottage was thinking of something to create for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. One of her close friends emailed her and told her she was having a hard time, despite looking so put-together, Nottage says. And, she found inspiration in that.
After researching heavily, Nottage found interest in the "De-Industrial Revolution," or the move away from good-paying factory jobs that kept cities running.
"Sweat" mainly follows the paths of a Black and a white family, as well as a white bartender and a Hispanic bar worker. The play is set in a bar, as Nottage says she felt inspired by how people talk when they have a little bit of "social lubrication." The fictional bar is a gathering place for many factory workers to get a drink after work, and the people who go there are largely lifelong friends without any acknowledgement of social standing — that is, until a Black woman earns a promotion and becomes one of the upper-level managers at the factory.
As the factory moves its business outside the country, suddenly the friends' well-paying jobs are terminated and they're locked out from working. The play chronicles the slow fracturing of the bonds that once tied them.
Being that Reading is primarily working-class town, where according to the American Community Survey more than 35% of its residents are living in poverty, Nottage worked with the United Way and talked with people living in Reading to make sure she didn't exploit people or their stories.
Nottage eventually brought the production to Reading, putting it in an accessible location, and nearly 500 people showed up. Afterwards, people stood up and told their stories to her, speaking about how they had gone through similar things in the real-world that she depicted in the play.
After Ressler finished asking questions, the floor opened for an audience Q&A.
One of the cast members of "Sweat" asked Nottage why she ended the play the way she did. It ends with a dramatic and jarring scene, cutting off before any relief.
Nottage says, simply, "There wasn't a way to answer the questions I was asking."
