Reading into Reading
Reading into Reading How empathetic are you? I mean, of course, you're empathetic, you're understanding and caring and kind and whatnot, but how truly empathetic are you? This is the core introspective question asked by Lynn Nottage's play, Sweat. It asks the audience to legitimately question their sense of empathy and understanding by forcing the audience to focus on the unknown and unseen of society, questioning the audience and characters on how much they try to understand people in different social situations than them. Sweat builds to this core question with a specific creative blend of contrast, colloquialisms, and symbolism. At the start of every chapter in the play, there's a brief description of what happened that day. The description is made up of two halves, one half explains what happened in global or national news that day, the other half mentioning whatever small incident or event happened that day in the book's main setting of Reading, Pennsylvani...