Menu
AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume 4, Number4. October 2020 Pp.35-42
The rapid growth in technological industries and international trade deals has affected the working-class community in the United States. They have to face unemployment and poverty because machines replaced workers in their work, causing the downsize of the numbers of the workers. The current paper examines how Lunn Nottage explores the de-industrial landscape of Reading town in Pennsylvania to display the impact of the economic crisis on the working-class community. Sweat unveils the dire conditions of work in the factory where those workers used to work and their suffering after losing their jobs. The employers and the government marginalized those workers as being invisible. The playwright set the play between 2000-2008 to present the economic and financial transformations, which consequently have motivated racial hostilities among the different ethnic groups of workers. The paper’s aim is to reveal the impact of poverty and unemployment on raising the evil inside human nature. The significance of the study lies in showing who is to be blamed for racial and hostile actions among various ethnic groups and the reasons for them. The playwright sheds light on the moral decline caused by the economic crisis when human beings feel they are invisible.
Mohammed,M. G. (2020). The Landscape of the Invisibles in Lynn Nottage’s Sweat. Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies 4 (4) 35-42.
Bigsby, C. (2017). Twenty-First century American playwrights. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108303620.008
Blustin, D. L. (2013). The psychology of working: A new perspective for a new era. In D. L. Blustin (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Psychology of Working. Available at http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxford/9780199758791.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199758791-e-001
Bondarenko, P. (2019). North American free-trade agreement. Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at https://www.britannica.com/event/North-American-Free-Trade-Agreement
Brown, E. (2016, December). Lynn Nottage’s sweat and blood. Interview Magazine. Available at https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/lynn-nottage-sweat
Brown, J. (2016). Steelworkers’ stories of disappearing jobs come to life on stage in ‘Sweat’. PSB News hour. Available at http://pbs.org/newshour/bb/steelworkers-stories-ofdisappearing-jobs-come-to-life-onstage-in-sweat
Glasberg, E. (2017, March). ’Sweat’, an acclaimed play by prof. Lynn Nottage, opens on Broadway. Columbia News. Available at https://news.columbia.edu/news/sweat-acclaimed-play-prof- lynn-nottage-opens-broadway
International Labour Organization (2020). Decent Work. Available at https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/decent-work/lang–en/index.htm
Jung, E. A. (2017, June). Lynn Nottage on Broadway diversity, Viola Davis, and why she writes about working people. Vulture Theatre. Available at https://www.vulture.com/2017/06/lynn-nottage-on-why-she-writes-about-working-people.html
Miller’90JRN, S. (Spring 2017). Labor of love. Columbia Magazine Arts & Humanities. Available at https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/labor-love
Mohler, C. E., McMahon, C., & Roman D. (2016). Three readings of Reading, Pennsylvania: Approaching Lynn Nottage’s Sweat and Douglas Carter Beans’s Shows for days. Theatre Journal, 68(1), 79-94.
Nottage, L. (2015, July 30). Extracting art from a downfall. New York Times. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/29/theater/20150802-sweat.html
Nottage, L. (2017). Sweat. New York: Theatre Communications Group.
Bantley, B. (2017, March). Review: ‘Sweat’ imagine the local bar a caldron. New York Times. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/26/theater/sweat-review-broadway.html
Shannon, S. G. (2007). An intimate look at the plays of Lynn Nottage. In P. C. Kolin (Ed.), African American women playwrights: A casebook (pp.185-193). Oxen and New York: Routledge.
Sweet, S. & Meiksins, P. (2016). Changing contours of work: Jobs and opportunities in the new economy (7th ed.). Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Wallenberg, C. (2020, January). A beleaguered factory town helped Lynn Nottage tell the story of ‘Sweat’. Available at https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/01/30/arts/beleaguered-factory-town-helped-lynn-nottage-tell-story-sweat/
Dr. Marwa Ghazi Mohammed is Assistant Professor of English Literature/Drama in the
Department of English at College of Education for Women, University of Baghdad, Iraq. She
received her PhD from University of Baghdad, Iraq, in 2017. Her teaching and research interests
revolve around modern literature, drama and comparative literature.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2419-8421
Copyright © 2023 AWEJ-tls.org. All rights reserved.