english sweat & hamlet

class division in sweat

highlighting breakdown of friendships and community as characters, who were once on the same level, become divided by the struggle for limited opportunities and a sense of declining social status

racial tension and jealousy

CYNTHIA: Be angry, but don’t make it about this… (points to the skin on the back of her hand)

TRACEY: And I betcha they wanted a minority. I got eyes

JESSIE: Tracey’s been going around town whispering that the only reason Cynthia got the job is cuz she’s black.

TRACEY: management is for them, not us.

racial tension and jealousy tied to OSCAR

TRACEY: you Puerto Ricans are burning shit down all over Reading, you gotta know. OSCAR: i’m columbian, and I don’t know.

TRACEY: That piece of paper that you’re holding is an insult, it don’t mean anything. Olstead’s isnt for you.

TRACEY: He’s eating your dinner, your steak and potatoes, your dessert!

adaptations of racial tension and jealousy

cynthia and tracey’s relationship, oscars, identity, impact of unemployment, setting of the bar, presentation of identity

Loss of identity, purpose, belonging

TRACEY: Do you know what it’s like to get up and have no place to go? I’m a worker… When my unemployment runs out I’ll have nothing.

CYNTHIA: He went through hell when his plant locked him out. Once he started messing with that dope I don’t recognize the man.

CYNTHIA: To say to the people you’ve worked with for years, that they’re not welcome anymore? I haven’t slept in…over a week.

Breakdown of solidarity/friendship

TRACEY: She’ll fight for what she loves, even if it means getting scrappy and looking ugly. That’s my friend, and I miss the Cynthia that understood her. 

TRACEY: I looked for your eyes. Just gimme something, Cynth.

TRACEY: I worked that line for over 20 years and Oscar thinks he can push in.

Friendship/Nostalgia

TRACEY: She’ll fight for what she loves, even if it means getting scrappy and looking ugly. That’s my friend, and I miss the Cynthia that understood that.

[Tracey and Cynthia dance together with the intimacy of close friends who’ve shared many adventures.]

TRACEY: I had to go down there and bail her out. New year’s eve.

[Chris and Jason, their younger selves, stand at the bar, tipsy.]

Ambition and perceived betrayal, emotional cost of advancement

CYNTHIA: To say to the people you’ve worked with for years that they’re not welcome anymore? I haven’t slept in… over a week.

TRACEY: I said you fucking traitor.

CYNTHIA: Maybe its for the best, right? I’ll finally get Chris out of this sinkhole.

CHRIS: I kinda wanna do something a little different than my moms and pops… I got aspirations. There it is, and I won’t apologize.

Oscar in representing the american dream

[He goes about his business, rarely acknowledged by anyone except Sam.]

‘quiet but visible presence’

[Oscar scrapes gum from the bottom of the tables. It is an unpleasant task but he is focused and determined.]

End of the play “I’m the manager… Bartend on weekends.”

Job outsourcing

job outsourcing used to fill roles left by locked out union employees refusing to take up lower wages, locked out workers blame innocent immigrants and latino workers for their unemployment

Oscar as a microcosm

Oscar’s new factory job is not out of malice, but because he sees an opportunity that others have refused. He shows humility and upward mobility by accepting lower wages that the union workers’ egos are too inflated to accept.

White privilege in relation to deindustrialization/lockouts

Their unspoken ideas of white privileged are challenged, they feel threatened in what they see is an ‘entitlement’ to them, and don’t realise the deindustrialization and money hungry companies view them as disposable/replaceable with cheaper workers. Invalidation of other’s success is displayed to bandage their personal failure.

Oscar as caring and overlooked

Oscar helps Jessie drunk “Hold onto me, I gotchu.”

Despite upward mobility his humility doesn’t change, when he is manager of the bar and Jason realizes he still takes care of brain damaged Sam, Oscar replies “That’s how it oughta be.”

[He works silently and methodically, actively listening. Note: Oscar’s quiet, but alert, his presence should be felt throughout.]

Setting of the bar

• Friendship and nostalgia quotes to show the bar is a place of storytelling/reminscing, reveals memory vs reality, bringing present conflict bubbling back to surface

• Racial tension/jealousy quotes to show bar as social, realism space where workers unwind and communicate work/personal grievances, which ultimately become racialized and communal, fueled by relaxed atmosphere and alcohol. naturalism, unfiltered, colloquial speech.

• temporal anchor across dual timeline flashbacks. bar has unchanged layout, offers an constant despite changing situations/identities/character dynamics. symbol of permanence, even after economic decline. critic quotes.

Critic quotes regarding bar as setting, realism

Konstantin Stanislavski: “it is not enough to discover the secret of a play, its thoughts and feelings. the actor must be able to convert them into living terms.” 

Brechtian ideas/quote

“The worst illiterate is the political illiterate.” In some aspects, characters such as Tracey and Chris fail to consider the impact of profit hungry companies and capitalism, they see skin colour as the direct cause of their personal losses rather than actual competency, turn to horizontal hostility rather than capitalism trap.

Brechtian techniques of Gestus of a character captures stereotypes and changing/surfacing attitudes towards race, social concepts. eg Oscar’s invisible yet symbolic presence.

Presentation of identity

• american dream quotes, oscar as a subtle story of hard work being rewarded.

• racial tension and jealousy quotes, self worth/image is tied to jobs and social status, identity of friendships is unknownly tied to working class solidarity, and not female solidarity.

• loss of identity and belonging quotes as a result of unemployment

• breakdown of working class solidarity/identity quotes to communicate tracey’s pov of betrayal and grievance of working class mutuality.

Jesse Green, Vulture

Oscar is the play’s quiet indictment of the American dream - he works hard, stays invisible, and is punished for trying to belong.

Links to essays about identity, oscar, unemployment

Ben Brantley, The New York Times

The bar in sweat is a crucible of resentment, where camaraderie curdles into suspicion and rage.

Links to essays about bar as setting, Tracey and Cynthia, Oscar as target for resentment

Nottage’s reason for a realism play

I get very frustrated when I go to the theatre and it feels like we’re in some sort of bubble that has no relation to what’s going on in the world.

Nottage’s reason for dual timeline

I wanted two generations to be in conversation. And I wanted to understand how the impact of the parents’ choices played out in the lives of their children.