Not everyone has the option of dealing from a position of power. For much of the 20th century, labor unions played a powerful role in the American workplace. Despite constant efforts to diminish and demolish their strength, work stoppages and "sickouts" kept breaking out. In August 1981, a strike by members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) led to swift retaliation by President Ronald Reagan, who invoked the Taft-Hartley Act to order strikers back to work within 48 hours or forfeit their jobs. On August 5th, Reagan fired more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, banning them form government jobs for the rest of their lives.
After PATCO was decertified by the Federal Labor Relations Authority in October 1981, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association was formed in 1987. However, in the three decades since, the economy has witnessed the strengthening of right-to-work laws in 27 states, the rise of the gig economy, as well as the work of vulture capitalists who strip a company of its assets and lock out its employees as part of offshoring production facilities and jobs.
From teachers strikes in 2018 to the current picket lines surrounding Marriott hotels, many workers are fighting for a living wage. When one probes the Broadway song catalog to see how the impact of managerial overreach has been depicted onstage, the results can be surprising.
When push comes to shove, negotiating is one giant power game. Those at the top who control the money are loathe to cede any of their power or wealth. Those with fewer protections are constantly struggling to retain their hard-earned employment benefits (as well as their jobs). Although computer technology has fostered greater efficiencies, the ability to move money (and jobs) in an instant puts the working class in deeper economic peril while the so-called "masters of the universe" remain insulated from the public's pain.
Thus, a troglodyte like Trump has no comprehension of the victories that most employees are celebrating on Labor Day while a forward-thinking billionaire like Jeff Bezos (who recently boosted the minimum wage for employees at Amazon and Whole Foods to $15/hour) offers a glimmer of hope for the future. Changes in technology have also brought about a democratization of the electronic tools capable of organizing supporters, crowdfunding campaigns, and communicating with people through social media in order to build a solid wave of resistance.
On January 20, 2018 global protests celebrated the first anniversary of the Women's March. With barely five weeks of planning (mostly performed by grieving teenagers in the wake of the mass shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida), the March For Our Lives drew huge crowds to Washington, D.C. Similar protests took place at 800 locations in the United States and in cities around the world). The natives are restless.
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With Pam MacKinnon on board as the company's new artistic director, American Conservatory Theater opened its 2018-2019 season with Lynn Nottage's timely drama entitled Sweat. Originally co-commissioned for Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s “American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle” series and the Arena Stage, Sweat premiered in Ashland in 2015 before the production moved to Washington, D.C. Following its New York premiere at The Public Theatre (which led to a Broadway transfer in 2017), Sweat was nominated for three Tony Awards and won the 2017 Obie Award for Playwriting as well as the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.Nottage did her research by embedding herself in Reading, Pennsylvania, a former company town whose work force mostly consisted of
“...middle-aged white guys who had so thoroughly invested in the American Dream that they assumed they would work in their jobs until they were ready to retire with fabulous pensions and health plans. They expected to live out their lives in relative comfort, but were broadsided and shocked when they woke up one morning to be told ‘The life that you knew is no longer going to exist. Not only is it no longer going to exist, you’re not going to have access to it.’ That forced them to rethink both their identity and their relationship to the Horatio Alger myth that hard work leads from rags to riches.”Andrew Boyce’s cozy unit set (enhanced by Hana S. Kim’s projections) was inspired by Mike’s Tavern, a bar in Reading that was once a gathering spot for employees of Dana Corp (a large auto parts factory). As the playwright notes, the bar was a place of comfort for the company's employees (a communal space as opposed to a communal work place). "The revolution that I’m interested in is the one that’s happening right now: the de-industrialization revolution. This isn’t a play about a strike, this is a play about a lockout,” stresses Nottage. “This is a very different narrative than the one that we’re used to.”
Nottage's cast of characters is multiracial, multi-ethnic, and multigenerational. As the timeline in Sweat bounces back and forth between 2000 and 2008, most of the action takes place in two distinct locations: the bar and a law enforcement facility where a parole officer named Evan (Adrian Roberts) counsels men under his supervision.
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| Adrian Roberts as Evan in a scene from Sweat (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
At the center of the play is the disintegration of an extremely tight friendship binding three female line workers who, between them, have more than a half century of experience working the production line at Olstead's mill. Each year, Tracey (Lise Bruneau), Cynthia (Tonye Patano), and Jessie (Sarah Nina Hayon) have celebrated their birthdays together at the bar. When word spreads that management is thinking of promoting someone from the production line to an administrative position, Cynthia and Tracey both apply for the job. While Cynthia moves up to the luxuries of a desk, a computer, and being able to work in an air-conditioned environment, Tracey claims that she wasn't chosen because (a) she wouldn't have sex with her boss, and (b) they probably wanted to hire a minority (Cynthia is African American).
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| Sarah Nina Hayon (Jessie), Lise Bruneau (Tracey), and Tonye Patano (Cynthia) in a scene from Sweat (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
As Cynthia becomes more aligned with the company's power structure, her friends increasingly resent the feeling that she is no longer "one of them." Meanwhile, Tracey has been on the outs with her husband, Brucie (Chiké Johnson), who has been locked out of his job at a nearby textile mill for 93 weeks. Depressed and down on his luck, Brucie is worried that his union plans to reject the latest contract offer, which means that he could lose all of his retirement funds. Their son, Chris (Kadeem Ali Harris), was recently accepted into a teaching program at Albright College. Chris's closest friend is Tracey's son, Jason (David Darrow), who dreams of owning a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
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| Kadeem Ali Harris (Chris) and David Darrow (Jason) in a scene from Sweat (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
As in many company towns, Chris and Jason followed their parents into jobs at the mill. But on July 4th, the two young men learn that their names are on a list of employees who have been laid off and that all of the company's machinery has been removed overnight from the mill. Olstead's management is insisting on a 60% pay cut from the workers and longer work hours while posting Spanish-language job opportunity notices to attract cheaper, non-union workers.
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| Lise Bruneau (Tracey) and Jed Parsario (Oscar) in a scene from Sweat (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
The two other men onstage are both employees of the bar. Stan (Rod Gnapp) used to work at Olstead's until he suffered a work-related injury. Since then, he has supported himself by working as a bartender while becoming increasingly cynical about the idea that any employer really cares about its workers. Oscar (Jed Parsario) is the young Colombian-American dishwasher who is looked down upon (if even noticed) by the bar's patrons. When Oscar gets hired for a part-time job at Olstead's after the company has locked out its union employees, Stan tries to warn him about what he might encounter when the bar's patrons learn that he has become a scab. Oscar, however, knows full well that no one at the bar considers him a friend, much less a person. Nor can he ignore the fact that his new part-time job pays $3 more per hour than washing dishes for Stan.
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| Jed Parsario (Oscar) and Rod Gnapp (Stan) in a scene from Sweat (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
By the time the clock returns to 2008, the wreckage left in the wake of de-industrialization has ruined several lives. The tight friendship between the three women has been destroyed. Tracey has become a drug addict and, despite working two jobs, Cynthia has lost her home after being unable to keep up with her mortgage payments. Chris and Jason have spent time in jail, Brucie is a wreck of a man and, following a most unfortunate incident, Oscar has replaced Stan as the bar's manager and bartender.
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| Tonye Patano (Cynthia) and Chiké Johnson (Brucie) in a scene from Sweat (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
With costumes by Ulises Alcala, lighting by Allen Lee Hughes, and sound designed by Jake Rodriguez, ACT's production has been directed with a great sense of compassion by Loretta Greco (who always gets superlative work from an ensemble). In addition to having a clear handle on the situations faced by the characters onstage, Greco points to a physical factor of the Geary Theatre's stage that helps make Nottage's drama even more powerful.
“We so rarely have genuine pieces of work in our culture that deal with the working class, that recognize the beauty and the dignity of what it is to really believe in hard work and your piece of that bigger American Dream. I’m kind of a class warrior. Lynn is looking at what’s broken, at these beautiful people who feel incredibly disenfranchised as the country begins to de-industrialize, and asking what do we do to regain the dignity of the working class when the one percent is so intent on making the gap wider and wider.”
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| Kadeem Ali Harris (Chris) and Chiké Johnson (Brucie) in a scene from Sweat (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
“With the glory of the Geary and its depth of field, we can really create the sense of context (around and above the intimacy of the bar), of the city moving on through images and video on these billboards above the bar. Those billboards are thrilling. That’s an opportunity that you rarely get in most spaces, even in some Broadway houses. You don’t have the depth and you don’t have the height that the Geary has.”
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| Sarah Nina Hayon (Jessie) and Rod Gnapp (Stan) in a scene from Sweat (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Performances of Sweat continue through October 21 at the American Conservatory Theater (click here for tickets).
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Up in Mill Valley, the Marin Theatre Company is presenting the West Coast premiere of Oslo, the award-winning political thriller by J.T. Rogers that reconstructs events leading up to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords which brought a temporary truce to the crisis in the Middle East (and represents far more than we should ever expect from Jared Kushner).Directed by Jasson Minadakis, the large cast moves quickly and deftly to keep the audience on the edge of its seats as tempers flare, red lines are crossed, and long-time political enemies are coaxed into cooperation through the seductive power of waffles. As Minadakis notes: “This production’s cast size is unusual for new plays on regional stages, but this playwright’s vision demands it. I am humbled that so many people believe our company should present new, urgent plays like Oslo.”
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| J. Paul Nicholas, Mark Anderson Phillips, Erica Sullivan, and Paris Hunter Paul in a tense scene from Oslo (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Because part of his life was spent living outside the United States, Rogers does not approach political drama with a big American chip on his shoulder. Some of his plays feature American characters "who are generally uninformed interlopers, either bumbling or swaggering into other nations’ complex political realities (indeed, the American diplomat who appears late in the second act of Oslo has little more than a dozen lines)."
Having spent two years of his childhood living in Malaysia and Indonesia, the playwright recalls that “My father, brother, and I were the only foreigners many people in the village had ever seen. Two years as ‘the other,’ cut off from anything from America other than airmail letters, was life altering."
As a playwright doing background research in foreign lands, he freely admits that "it has been incredibly nerve-wracking to talk face-to-face with people whose culture and beliefs I know little about. It is humiliating to be confronted with the depths of my ignorance."
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| J. Paul Nicholas, Ashkon Davaran, Paris Hunter Paul, and Peter James Meyers in a scene from Oslo (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Working on a simple unit set designed by Sean Fanning (with costumes by Fumiko Bielefeldt, lighting by York Kennedy, and sound design by Sara Huddleston), the cast of Oslo faces several challenges in keeping the audience's attention.
- First and foremost is delivering a huge amount of exposition which explains why two ordinary Norwegian citizens would attempt to circumvent standard diplomatic protocols by setting up their own back channel between the members of the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
- Next is establishing who the various negotiators are, the amount of authority they have in the process, and the key political figures they are either working for or trying to navigate around.
- Rogers must also lay the groundwork for a cast of characters with huge egos who are willing to risk death in the hope of reaching a peace (even if some of them have never been in the same room with one of their enemies).
- The key to success is clearly defined as making sure that while the negotiators try to reach agreement during long hours in a conference room, they must leave all their anger and frustration in the conference room and relate to each other as human beings during drinks and dinner as they talk about their families, friends, hobbies, and passions.
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| Mark Anderson Phillips (Terje Rød-Larsen) and Aaron Davidman (Yossi Beilin) discuss creating a back channel for negotiations in a scene from Oslo (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Because Oslo is a notoriously "talky" play which cannot afford to rest for a moment, pacing is a key factor in maintaining the intense level of intrigue. In the following interview the playwright explains how, while working with director Bartlett Sher on the original production, he developed a process for building a "life or death" sense of urgency into each scene while managing to cut the play's initial length by an hour.
The talented cast forms a tight ensemble, which is probably best broken down by their political alliances. As the two Norwegians whose ingenuity leads to the creation of a diplomatic back channel, Mark Anderson Phillips shines as the idealistic Terje Rød-Larsen (the founding director of Oslo's Fafo Foundation, a research foundation focused on global politics and living conditions around the world) with Erica Sullivan as his more practical partner, Mona Juul (a diplomat in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
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| Erica Sullivan (Monica Juul) and Mark Anderson Phillips (Terje Rød-Larsen) in a scene from Oslo (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Joe Estlack, who later appears as an American diplomat, portrays Thor Bjornevog (a senior officer with the Norwegian Police Security Service) with Charles Shaw Robinson doubling as Johan Jorgen Holst (Norway's incoming Minister of Foreign Affairs) and Finn Grandal (the Norwegian groundskeeper for the Borregaard Manor outside Oslo). Marcia Pizzo appears in multiple small roles as Marianne Heiberg (Holst's wife who was a senior expert at the FaFo Foundation and co-author of the first major study of politics and living conditions in Gaza and the West Bank), a Swedish hostess, a German wife, and Toril Grandal (the housekeeper and cook at Borregaard Manor whose magical recipe for waffles keeps the negotiators coming back for more).
The Israelis are portrayed by Aaron Davidman as Yossi Beilin (Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister), Brian Herndon (as economics professor Yair Hirschfeld), Corey Fisher (as Israel's new Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres), and Peter James Meyers as Joel Singer (a former military lawyer who has become the legal advisor to the Israeli Foreign Ministry). As the bullish Uri Savir (the newly-appointed Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry), Paris Hunter Paul delivers the evening's most forceful characterization.
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| As Uri Savir, Paris Hunter Paul leads a toast in a scene from Oslo (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
The Palestinians are represented by Ashkon Davaran as Hassan Asfour (a member of the Palestinian Communist Party serving as the PLO's Deputy Director of International Relations) and J. Paul Nicholas, who gives a most sympathetic performance as Ahmed Qurie (a Palestinian financier serving as the PLO's Finance Minister).
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| J. Paul Nicholas, Ashkon Davaran, Ryan Tasker, Brian Herndon, and Paris Hunter Paul in a scene from Oslo (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Many cast numbers appear in multiple guises. Ryan Tasker doubles as Jan Egeland (Norway's Deputy Foreign Minister under Holst) and Ron Pundak (an Israeli professor who, along with Yair Hirschfeld, co-founded the Economic Cooperation Foundation). Adam Neimann doubles as Trond Gundersen (an officer with the Norwegian Police Security Service) and a German husband. Characters that are frequently referenced but never seen onstage include the U.S. Secretary of State (Warren Christoper), the Chairman of the PLO (Yasser Arafat), the Prime Minister of Israel (Yitzhak Rabin), and King Hussein of Jordan.
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| Marcia Pizzo, Adam Neimann, and Erica Sullivan in a tense moment of comic relief in Oslo (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Rogers does a phenomenal job of weaving an intricate web of diplomatic intrigue in which each character gets to shine while pursuing an almost impossible dream. Crafted with the meticulous dexterity of a Sondheim score, Oslo offers a sobering postscript which details what happened to each of the participants after the peace talks concluded with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shaking hands in front of President Bill Clinton at the White House on September 13, 1993. A great deal of credit goes to Minadakis, whose stage direction goes far beyond the role often described as a "traffic cop" in operatic productions.
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| Mark Anderson Phillips (Terje Rød-Larsen), Erica Sullivan (Mona Juul), Corey Fisher (Shimon Peres) and Marcia Pizzo in a scene from Oslo (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Performances of Oslo continue at the Marin Theatre Company through October 28 (click here for tickets).
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