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With humor and heart Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Sweat,” tells the story of a group of friends who have spent their lives sharing drinks, secrets and laughs while working together on the line of a factory floor.

But when layoffs and picket lines begin to chip away at their trust, the friends find themselves pitted against each other in the hard fight to stay afloat.

Kate Whoriskey directs this new play about the collision of race, class, family and friendship, and the tragic, unintended costs of community without opportunity.

Following a sold-out run at The Public Theater, the critically acclaimed play opened on Broadway last month. WNYC editor Rebecca Carroll sits down for an unconventional conversation with the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and acclaimed director.

About the Guests

Lynn Nottage (Playwright) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter. Her plays include: “Sweat” (Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), “By The Way,” “Meet Vera Stark,” “Ruined,” “Intimate Apparel,” “Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine,” “Crumbs from the Table of Joy,” “Las Meninas,” “Mud, River, Stone,” “Por’knockers,” and “POOF!”.  Nottage is the recipient of a PEN/Laura Pels Master Dramatist Award, Doris Duke Artist Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, Steinberg “Mimi” Distinguished Playwright Award, Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, the inaugural Horton Foote Prize, Obie Awards, Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award, NY Drama Critics’ Circle Awards, Outer Critics Circle Award, Audelco Awards, Lilly Award, Helen Hayes Award, Lee Reynolds Award, NBT Fest’s August Wilson Playwriting Award and a Guggenheim Grant. She’s a member of The Dramatists Guild and the WGAE.

Kate Whoriskey (Director) most recently directed the world premiere of “Sweat” at Arena Stage and Oregon Shakespeare Festival and its off-Broadway production at the Public. She has also collaborated with Lynn Nottage on the world premieres of “Ruined,” “Fabulation” and “Intimate Apparel.” Her NY credits include Circle in the Square, The Public, Second Stage, Manhattan Theatre Club, Lincoln Center Theatre, the Vineyard Theatre, Theatre for A New Audience, and Playwrights Horizons. Nominated for a Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel for her work on Ruined, she has worked regionally at The Goodman theatre, South Coast Rep, The Geffen, the American Repertory Theatre, the Shakespeare theatre, the Huntington, Baltimore Center Stage, Perseverance Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Sundance Theatre Lab. Internationally, she directed “Magdalena” at the Chatelet theatre in Paris and Teatro Municipal de Sao Paolo.

About How I Got Over series:

Join us for a new project reinventing language around race through a series of conversations and performances that explore, express and examine what it means when a social construct becomes the social order. We want people to get personal. We want provocative dialogue. We want to generate new language to execute real change. We want to talk about fear – and how it’s different if you are black or white. We want to hear people explore racism.

Discover and watch previous conversations with Ethan Hawke, Kristin Davis, Ezra Edelman, Jacqueline Woodson and Daniel José Older, and LaToya Ruby Frazier, Carrie Mae Weems and Sarah Lewis.