Want to Bring Performances of SWEAT To Your UU Church This Fall?

 

The Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Committee and the Chalice Theatre  at the UU Church in Arlington (UUCA) are collaborating on a staged reading of the Pulitizer-Prize-winning play SWEAT, by Lynn Nottage, to be directed by Bruce McConachie, UUCSS.

After its opening weekend in Arlington (10/13 & 14), we plan to tour the show to UU churches in the DC area this fall on the weekends of October 20, 27, and November 3.   If you would like your church members to see this stirring play about racism, economic inequality, class, immigration, and closing factories, please volunteer as a Local Producer to bring this touring show to your church.

SWEAT features many of the issues that will dominate our midterm elections this fall.

Set in Reading, PA, the play follows two families, one Black and the other White, whose mothers both work in a local factory and whose sons, like their mothers, are close friends. As layoffs loom, their friendships begin to fray, long-buried racism emerges, and the sons pick a fight with a Hispanic worker temporarily hired at the factory. Eight years later, both sons emerge from jail to find that one of the families has fallen apart and the other one is barely holding things together.

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The drama has a cast of nine, which includes 3 Black characters, 4 Whites, I Hispanic, and another character who could be any race or ethnicity. Their ages range from the 20s to 50s and the gender breakdown is 3 women and 6 men. We will rehearse the script-in-hand show 3 times a week from 9/22 until 10/13.

A play for teens as well as adults, SWEAT dramatizes the personal costs of national policies in our era of deindustrialization, globalization, and family fragmentation. We look forward to lively discussions after each performance.

We need Local Producers to:

• Organize a small committee of church members to schedule a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday time and place in your church during the 3 available weekends (Oct 20, 27 & Nov 3) for one or two performances of SWEAT.
• Publicize auditions for SWEAT among your members. (TBD at All Souls Church between 9/8 and 9/14.  At Arlington, 9/15, 1-3:00 and 9/18, 7:30-9)
• Arrange staging and technical support for the performance(s) at your church. Microphones, chairs, lighting for a stage reading. (Details to be provided.)
• Publicize the show to your congregation.
• Introduce the acting troupe and make arrangements to pass collection plates for voluntary contributions before the show.
• Determine possible refreshments during (Intermission) and/or after the show.
• Perhaps lead or at least introduce leader of post-show discussion with actors.

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Interested in working with the SWEAT team as a Local Producer? Call or write Bruce McConachie, Director, 412-519-5681 or bamcco@pitt.edu. Thanks.