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Lynn Nottage: 'Nostalgia is a disease many white Americans have'


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Taken from interviews with residents of America’s poorest city, the Pulitzer-winning playwright’s Sweat has new resonance in the era of Trump and Sanders

 

 

David Smith in Washington

 

Wednesday 17 February 2016 16.20 GMT

 

 

 

When playwright Lynn Nottage began work on Sweat, Bernie Sanders was a little-known socialist senator, Donald Trump was a reality TV host and neither had a snowball in hell’s chance of reaching the White House.

 

But Sweat, currently playing at the Arena Stage in Washington, is a drama whose time has come. The play is based on Nottage’s interviews with residents of Reading, Pennsylvania, which in 2011 was ranked the poorest city in America. It focuses on a group of friends whose jobs at the local steel mill are threatened by the decline of American manufacturing.

 

The 2016 presidential election has been dominated by alienation and anger towards the elites, with Sanders and Trump acting as lightning rods. “I would say that one of the things that America has gone through is that white middle-class men are losing a sense of identity and of their supremacy,” Nottage, 51, tells the Guardian. “I think that’s why Donald Trump is someone they gravitate towards because he speaks like a fascist and he’s a nativist and all those things.”

 

The Republican frontrunner says he will “make America great again”. His strongest support is among a white working class coming to terms with both post-industrialisation and a more racially diverse America. Nottage, who is African American, continues: “It’s this fear that their power base is eroding and not wanting to move toward an America that’s more inclusive, and trying to hold on to something past.

 

“In the play one of the characters says, ‘Nostalgia is a disease’, and I do believe that it’s a disease that many white Americans have. They’re holding on this notion of what America was, even though we know it never was that. It’s this false notion of America. It was never great, at least from my point of view. It was always problematic. The ‘golden age’ was for like a handful of people.”

 

Nottage won a Pulitzer prize for Ruined, set in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and examining the use of rape as a weapon of war, again based on journalist inquiry and interviews on the ground. Sweat came about after she received an email from a friend who had fallen on hard times, joined the Occupy Wall Street protests and read a New York Times article about the plight of Reading.

 

She spent two years exploring the decaying steel and textile town from every angle. She found it highly segregated along racial lines, with Latinos now the majority, and noted the once-shiny malls that had closed down. “I describe myself as a light seeker, so I went there with the assumption that I would find these incredible pockets of resilience and optimism,” says Nottage, based at Columbia University in New York. “Two years later I found that nothing had changed and that shocked me and surprised me and disappointed me.

 

“The other thing that surprised me and points to the rise of someone like Donald Trump is how easy it was to scapegoat Latinos for the economic woes in the city. I usually had to scratch the surface to get people to talk more candidly and freely, and people were blaming it on immigrants and blaming it on an influx of new folks who would take jobs and work for less, which is certainly not true.”

 

Nottage was particularly moved by the stories of steelworkers. Their experience had parallels with what she witnessed while staying in Mansfield in the UK during the 1984 miners strike. Now they make her think not of Trump but Sanders, the 74-year-old Vermont senator who is pushing Hillar-y Clinton hard for the Democratic nomination.

 

“It’s one of the things I remember distinctly, when I was sitting around with these steelworkers who were by and large middle-aged white folks who you associate with a certain level of politics. When we finished speaking I said, ‘You guys sound like socialists’, so I think that Bernie Sanders is definitely articulating something that is in the air, that people feel as though corporations have too much control over the outcome of our lives, that the middle class has been diminished to the point where by and large we have no voice.”

 

Trump and Sanders share maverick outsider status but little else. Trump has called for a ban on Muslims entering the country, building a wall to keep undocumented Mexican immigrants out and bringing manufacturing jobs back from China and elsewhere. Sanders has roundly condemned bigotry and promised to challenge Wall Street and reverse inequality in the economy, education and healthcare.

 

Nottage adds: “I think it’s two extremes. People who feel marginalised are either grasping one side of the other; it appeals to people who are outside the political machine. But it’s two different philosophies: you have Donald Trump who’s a nativist and someone who wants to shut down the borders and Bernie Sanders is someone who’s really about community building and understands that inclusion can be our strength rather than our weakness.”

 

As for Barack Obama, the writer acknowledges that he inherited an economy on the brink of ruin and had to rebuild, but comments: “I feel disappointed that he didn’t do more. I feel disappointed that he didn’t spent a little more time looking into these fractured communities.”

 

Obama’s election was also hailed as a moment of historic symbolism for America’s racial politics. Yet his presidency has been marked by unrest in major cities and police shootings of young black men that inspired the Black Lives Matter movement. “All you have to do is turn on the television to understand that there really is a great schism in America right now and that race relations are very fragile,” Nottage reflects.

 

“I think the fact is: here’s a movement of young people who feel much more comfortable articulating their frustration. I don’t think that it’s a reflection of devolving race relations; they’re just tired of the status quo.”

 

It is a status quo that persists in the economy, at the Oscars and in the theatre world too. More than half a century after Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, many feel there is still a lack of diversity among directors and producers, with implications for the writers they select and the audiences they attract. “By and large the theatre establishment is run by a white majority,” Nottage says.

 

“If you’re looking at the people who head the institutions, there are very few African Americans or people of colour. I’m talking about the major theatres that position themselves as serving all audiences. What you find is by and large people who are shaping what we see and the people who are the tastemakers are white.”

 

She adds: “I actually feel relatively privileged at this place in my career that I have managed to climb my way up to the point where I can have my plays produced at some of these larger stages, but it wasn’t an easy climb. The frustration that I have … a lot of times when I’m produced at one of the major off-Broadway theatres, I tend to be the only African American who’s represented as a playwright in those seasons and perhaps the only playwright of colour.”

 

Nottage is now working on a companion piece to Sweat, which began life at the Oregon Shakespeare festival directed by longtime collaborator Kate Whoriskey. Asked which playwright she most admires, she has a comprehensive answer: “The person whose work introduced me to the craft was Lorraine Hansberry; the person who taught me to love the craft was Tennessee Williams; the person who really taught me the power of the craft was August Wilson; and the person who taught me the political heft of the craft was Arthur Miller.

 

“I also think we’re in a really exciting, golden moment in American playwriting where there’s a lot being said and a lot of enormously talented folks who are writing.” She cites Suzan-Lori Parks, Tony Kushner, Ayad Akhtar, Katori Hall and Annie Baker.

 

Finally, what does Nottage make of the prospect of President Donald Trump? “I absolutely refuse to contemplate that,” she says firmly. “I really do not see a future where that is possible.”

 

 

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Lynn Nottage: ‘People who feel marginalised are either grasping one side of the other.’ Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

 

 

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At the end of their rope: Reza Salazar, Kimberly Scott, Tara Mallen and Johanna Day in Sweat. Photograph: Colin Hovde/C Stanley Photography

 

 

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Adrift in Trumpland: Kevin Kenerly and Tramell Tillman in Sweat. Photograph: Colin Hovde/C Stanley Photography

 

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/feb/17/lynn-nottage-sweat-donald-trump-bernie-sanders

 

 

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Let me break this down from a different perspective.  Rather than blaming a perceived white dominated industry and society for it's lack of acceptance of her obviously exceptional talents........perhaps she should take a long hard look at herself and realize that maybe, just maybe, her talents are above average at best.  And the industry, through pressured racial inclusion, is actually throwing her a bone by producing her work at all.  Don't hate the player, hate the game.  As always, just my opinion.

 

GO RV, then BV

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“In the play one of the characters says, ‘Nostalgia is a disease’, and I do believe that it’s a disease that many white Americans have. They’re holding on this notion of what America was, even though we know it never was that. It’s this false notion of America. It was never great, at least from my point of view. It was always problematic. The ‘golden age’ was for like a handful of people.”

Just think... some years down the road when everybody is finally equal,  Nottage will be sitting in her rocking chair on her front porch  waxing nostalgic to her grandkids about a time in history when black folk could milk the cow of division and white guilt spread like mold in a badly vented basement.  Why I can hear her now, "Children, there was a day when bad screenwriting, bad radio, bad television and bad politics escaped scrutiny because white Americans had a disease called nostalgia and the virus that carried it was called white privilege.  But now, no thanks to that Baby Jesus, we're all equal and G-maw Nottage is out of work..."

Edited by George Hayduke
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