Excerpt from WYSO Culture Couch
Wright State Theater presents “Sweat,” a provocative play that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017. The play helps us understand what events led to our deepening divisions of class and race.
We first meet Tracey and Cynthia celebrating Tracey’s birthday at their local bar in Reading, Pennsylvania, rust belt country. It’s 2000, and Santana’s “Smooth” is playing on the jukebox. The friends have worked blue collar jobs on the same factory floor all their lives, and they share everything. Tracey is white and Cynthia is black. At the bar, race has never come between the two women. In this scene, it comes out that management may need a new supervisor.
Cynthia: Who knows? I might apply.
Tracey: What? Get out of here!
Cynthia: Why the hell not? I got 24 years on the floor.
Tracey: I got you beat by 2. Started in ’74. Walked in straight out of high school, first and only job. Management is for them. Not us.
Madyson McCabe plays Tracey, the white character. The actress grew up in Toledo, and she sees a lot of Tracey’s character in her stepmom who works in a Detroit steel stamping plant.
“She worked on the line when she was out of high school just kind of like Tracey,” says McCabe, “and she worked her way up. She talks about when the auto industry was like saved in like 2008 or around that time. She’s like, “I remember watching the news and just sobbing.”
