Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Sweat: There are no successful victims
“They took our jobs!”
Can you spot the victim in this picture?
Sweat is a great example of a play written for people who go to the theater but about people who would never go to the theater. In other words, this is a “blue-state” playwright writing about “red-state” characters for a “blue-state” audience. That’s not completely fair, but it’s one-hundred-percent true.
Sweat
- San Diego Repertory Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza, Downtown San Diego
- $21 - $53
The setting is a factory town in Pennsylvania — yet again. We know this scenario well. Factory jobs are being moved to Mexico, and the whites aren’t happy about it. Then a black woman gets a promotion instead of a white woman. Bring on the victim narrative.
During the performance I kept thinking about an ancient South Park episode which featured the rallying cry, “They took our jobs!” That episode does, essentially, what this play does. It demonstrates the willingness of blue-collar Americans to play the victim, to their own demise.
The play covers familiar ground, but it’s ground which needs to be constantly rediscovered. What is that familiar ground? There are no successful victims. Everybody should know this by now, but it feels as though the social tide is running contrary to that.
Personal rights and the victimization of said rights are becoming the foundation of our social discourse. How many discussions start off with, “As a [fill in the blank] I feel like I’ve been mistreated”? (Read: victimized).
Here’s what you won’t hear very often: “As a person who bases his or her life on personal responsibility, I refuse to be victimized.” That’s the end of the discussion. There is no issue to be discussed if there is no victim.
Sweat addresses racial relations and I, as a white male of ultimate privilege, felt that the script was flipped in a most appropriate way. The black community and some elements of black leadership have been criticized for fostering a victim narrative. Sweat argues that a victim narrative can be found within the white community as well. Some might say we have a president who won an election off of a victim narrative which appealed to white America.
Sweat plays at San Diego Repertory Theatre through May 12.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Sweat: There are no successful victims
“They took our jobs!”
Sweat: There are no successful victims
“They took our jobs!”
Can you spot the victim in this picture?
Sweat is a great example of a play written for people who go to the theater but about people who would never go to the theater. In other words, this is a “blue-state” playwright writing about “red-state” characters for a “blue-state” audience. That’s not completely fair, but it’s one-hundred-percent true.
Sweat
- San Diego Repertory Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza, Downtown San Diego
- $21 - $53
The setting is a factory town in Pennsylvania — yet again. We know this scenario well. Factory jobs are being moved to Mexico, and the whites aren’t happy about it. Then a black woman gets a promotion instead of a white woman. Bring on the victim narrative.
During the performance I kept thinking about an ancient South Park episode which featured the rallying cry, “They took our jobs!” That episode does, essentially, what this play does. It demonstrates the willingness of blue-collar Americans to play the victim, to their own demise.
The play covers familiar ground, but it’s ground which needs to be constantly rediscovered. What is that familiar ground? There are no successful victims. Everybody should know this by now, but it feels as though the social tide is running contrary to that.
Personal rights and the victimization of said rights are becoming the foundation of our social discourse. How many discussions start off with, “As a [fill in the blank] I feel like I’ve been mistreated”? (Read: victimized).
Here’s what you won’t hear very often: “As a person who bases his or her life on personal responsibility, I refuse to be victimized.” That’s the end of the discussion. There is no issue to be discussed if there is no victim.
Sweat addresses racial relations and I, as a white male of ultimate privilege, felt that the script was flipped in a most appropriate way. The black community and some elements of black leadership have been criticized for fostering a victim narrative. Sweat argues that a victim narrative can be found within the white community as well. Some might say we have a president who won an election off of a victim narrative which appealed to white America.
Sweat plays at San Diego Repertory Theatre through May 12.
Comments