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I received this comment on my remarks about SWEAT. The writer is the friend I took to the play with me. She is a Justice of the Peace.

“Looks like you hit the nail....I would like to add that the pain all the players exhibited was ‘too soon’ —as they say—too recent, most of us still feel the pain and confusion of the job loss in small towns and cities.This idea of loss and its effect on self, family and community relationships may have been more effective if the over arching issue was not taken full on, in a gentler fashion, perhaps a stabilizing factor of an old crone and not a disgruntled bar owner with his own unresolved past experiences.

[In the play ] -No one knew how to problem solve, no head, just heart ... breaking, jealous, despondent hearts swimming in the unknown.... no dreamers who could stay the course....just dreamers who couldn’t manifest their dreams into reality...couldn’t  find another way... Very intense, very disturbing, very sad....Nothing to bring home with you but emotional upset from observing way too much relentless unfocused rage. Nothing to see here but an accident where a bystander is maimed by another by stander ....the rage continues...”

Well, it was an emotional event, I guess, but I still don’t think it was a play.

I’m getting ready to give my talk about my book, ENDINGS,at Ryerson University on Thursday morning.

I could write another book.

too bad

First, let me tell you how much I admire Lynn Nottage. I saw her Pulitzer-Prize-wnning (2009) play Ruined at Nightwood Theatre in Toronto in 2011. Good play and with a weatlh of credits and awards:

Awards and nominations

Pulitzer Prize

  • Pulitzer Prize for Drama - Winner

Drama Desk Awards

Outer Critics Circle Award

  • Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play – Winner

  • Outstanding Lighting Design (Play or Musical) – Peter Kaczorowski (nomination)

  • Outstanding Actress in a Play – Saidah Arrika Ekulona (nomination)

  • Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play – Condola Rashad (nomination)

Drama League Award

  • Distinguished Production of a Play (nomination)

  • Distinguished Performance Award, Saidah Arrika Ekulona (nomination)

Lucille Lortel Award

  • Outstanding Play (Manhattan Theatre Club and Goodman Theatre, Producer; Lynn Nottage, Playwright) – Winner

  • Outstanding Director (nomination)

  • Outstanding Lead Actress – Saidah Arrika Ekulona Winner

Obie Awards

  • Best New American Play Winner

  • Performance

Quincy Tyler Bernstine Winner

Saidah Arrika Ekulona Winner

Russell Gebert Jones Winner

Wow!

But

That doesn’t mean I have to like everything.

I went to the Canadian Stage yesterday with high hopes and great expectations. Nottage’s new play, Sweat, is on now. at the Bailiie Theatre. I’ve been getting flex tickets from Cdn.Stage for several years now and have never been disappointed—till now. I walked out at intermission.

The actors were good. The set was iffy — too well-stocked a bar for the neighbourhood and the tastes of its customers. The direction was questionable: the entire ensemble started too high and had nowhere to go but sideways. But—sorry—I’m saying this about a successful playwright, far more successful than I will ever ever be, and one who teaches playwriting at Columbia University in New York— but, it’s not a good play. It’s very political; it has good cause for its focus; it’s still current and vital, BUT it’s still not a good play.

I know I know — here are the awards it has won, including the Pulitzer Prize (2017):

Awards and nominations

Awards

Other awards to Nottage:

  • 2018 Induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters

  • 2017 Induction into The American Academy of Arts and Science

  • 2017 Award of Merit, American Academy of Arts and Letters to "an outstanding playwright for her body of work"

  • 2017 AUDELCO Award for Outstanding Achievement

  • 2017 Lucille Lortel Sidewalk Star

  • 2016 PEN/Laura Pels "Master American Dramatist" Award

  • 2016 Literature Award from The Academy of Arts and Letters

  • 2016 Columbia University Provost Grant

  • 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award, 2016

  • 2013 Madge Evans-Sidney Kingsley Award

  • 2012 Nelson A. Rockefeller Award For Creativity

  • 2010 Steinberg "Distinguished Playwright" Award

  • 2010 Horton Foote Award

  • 2007 MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship

  • 2005 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for Drama and Performance Art

  • 2004 PEN/Laura Pels "Mid-Career Playwright" Award

  • 2000 & 1994 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship

  • 1994 Van Lier Playwright Fellowship

  • National Black Theatre Festival August Wilson Playwriting Award

Fellowships, commissions, and residencies

Go ahead, give me an argument. But I think Sweat breaks all the rules of Playwriting 101. So I walked out. That’s what makes horse races. Too bad.