Unpacking Blue Collar Tensions

By Tom Porter
America's disappearing middle class is the subject of Lynne Nottage's Pulitzer Prize-winning play SWEAT. This powerful drama, set in Reading, Pennsylvania, highlights the tensions among blue collar factory workers as the their jobs come under threat.

The Department of Theater and Dance is staging the Maine premiere of the play, which explores how the recession of the early 2000s created explosive battles along racial and ethnic fault lines in America's Rust Belt. Theater professor Davis Robinson, who directs the production, talks about why the play remains important and the challenges of staging a barroom brawl, among other things.

Performances of SWEAT will be in Pickard Theater, March 1-2 at 7:30 p.m., and on March 3 at 2:00 p.m. Join us after first performance for a reception sponsored by the Association of Bowdoin Friends!