Sweat

Sweat uses a poem by Langton Hughes—“Let America Be America Again”—as an epigraph, setting the tone for characters’ struggles, desires, hopes, and fears throughout the play. How does the resonance of lines such as “America never was America to me” and “All make America again” change over the course of the play’s events? How do certain developments in the play converse with these lines? How do you interpret Nottage’s use of this poem in light of Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make American Great Again”? 

In place of setting descriptions, Sweat includes descriptions of the news at the time of each scene. These descriptions incorporate commonplace details from local news—“Outside it’s 72 degrees F […] Reading residents sample fresh apple cider at the Annual Fall Festival on Old Dry Road Farm”—alongside national news that suggests mass-scale changes—“The 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly convenes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 778.68 points, marking the largest single-day decline in stock market history” (5). Why do you think Nottage includes these details in place of more traditional scene setting? How do these different details correspond with each other (and with specific developments in each scene)?