Sarah Jones explores the Declaration of Independence and more in latest solo show (photo by HanJie Chow)
AMERICA, WHO HURT YOU?
Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center
262 Ashland Pl. between Lafayette Ave. & Fulton St.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 4, $70-$125
www.tfana.org
americawhohurtyou.com
At the end of Sarah Jones’s potent one-woman show, America, Who Hurt You?, at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Fort Greene, the Queens-born actress, podcaster, solo specialist, and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador asks audience members to stand “and if you’re open to it, silently hug the person you’re with if you already have their consent, or you can silently give ocular hugs — I made that up.” I was there by myself on the aisle, and the seat next to me was empty; I looked around and no one near me seemed to want to hug anyone but who they were with. I was both disappointed and relieved.
However, that night there was a talkback, followed by a gathering with food and drink at a pub down the street. After filling a plate and getting a stout, I found a small round table and sat down. A woman next to me did the same at a second table. In a move that was extremely unlikely for me, I asked to join her, and she heartily accepted.
We started discussing the play, in which Jones celebrates the semiquincentennial of the nation by exploring how the past has led to the present, focusing on the ever-growing gap between right and left, Republican and Democrat, on various critical issues. I mentioned that I had wanted to ask a question at the talkback but it turned out that someone else had already submitted the same query, about how the show would play in red states; it turned out that the interlocutor was the woman I was sitting with.
Jones had answered, “I want to take this show to Hank,” referring to one of the characters she portrays, a Trump-supporting right winger. “And there’s a version of it that can actually, hopefully hold a dialogue. I have to get my ego out of the way, because I don’t think I’m going to get a standing ovation necessarily from those folks. But that’s not the point; the point is to connect and remind them that we’re related, and that maybe we can do some family counseling together.”
Jones was certainly creating connection at the party, but in this case she was preaching to the choir, an audience of New York City liberals. Would it work in MAGA territory? I wondered.
Family photographs are occasionally projected as Sarah Jones delves into America’s past and present (photo by HanJie Chow)
America, Who Hurt You? is the follow-up to Jones’s 2000 Surface Transit, set on a New York City bus; the Tony-winning 2006 Bridge & Tunnel, about New York City’s immigrant communities; and her 2016 Sell/Buy/Date, which deals with the commercial sex trade. Some of her earlier characters reappear in the latest work, which began life as a podcast about the upcoming 2024 presidential election. “We thought perhaps sanity might prevail, and it was sort of facetious. Like, ‘America, girl,’ who hurt you? Why are you like this? Are you alright? Blink twice. You in danger! Too many?” she says in the play’s introduction. “Well, we all know how it’s turned out. It’s going really well. I mean, have you bought eggs or berries or lettuce recently? No, you probably haven’t because then you might have fucking salmonella-cyclospora and have to miss the theater tonight.”
Among the characters of different genders, ethnicity, age, and class who share their opinions about the state of the nation are Lorraine (“I come from the white part of Sarah’s family that has both Christians and Jews. It’s a long story filled with intrigue and interfaith guilt.”), Nereida (“It’s feels very . . . gentrified to be with you at your Shakespeare Theater”), Rashid (“Whenever we got a room with some good white people in it, we appreciate y’all, that’s mad important, and I know this shit ain’t all your fault, however, for real for real, we gon’ need y’all to fix this.”), Gary (“It does take more than centuries of extermination campaigns, broken treaties, and making us blue creatures for the Avatar movie franchise to destroy an entire people.”), Ms. Lady (“Hank, you know good and well, y’all been lying through your teeth for centuries about the real history of America.”), Mrs. Ling (“Now this country, it’s different. It’s not safe anymore – so many people, more afraid, more separated, there’s more hate, and Sarah Jones started to be afraid for us to speak in public.”), Suneeta (“In recent years even I have begun to warn her that perhaps she should tread lightly or face possible accusations of the cultural appropriation.”), and Habiba (“The past few years especially, the voice I used to share with her, it has been silent.”).
An engaging figure and compelling storyteller, Jones also reaches into the country’s not-always-illustrious history as we meet Louise, who was sold as a slave when she was twelve; Civil War veteran Juan-Carlos, a Mexican who argues that the North broke promises they made to foreign soldiers; and Moira, Jeannie, Shizuko, Edmund, and Marcus, who help round out the diaspora. Jones employs only minor adjustments in shifting among characters, changing her accent and her body movement.
There are also several phone conversations between Britain (“America, I love you, but you are at a frightful bottom – we believe you’re in complete denial, and this is a therapeutic intervention.”) and America (“I’m just getting better and better – like, I’m the hottest country in the world, no one can get in!”)
Projections behind Jones feature family photographs, a live video feed, and a timeline that would probably be controversial in many schools, as the truth hurts. It’s likely no accident that the official logo of the play has a whole lot more red than it does blue in its patriotic design. The play is warmly directed by Eric Ting (The Comeuppance, Between Two Knees), with set and lighting by Jiyoun Chang, sound by Palmer Hefferan, costume by Toni-Leslie James, and video by Stefania Bulbarella.
A production of the National Black Theatre and Theatre for a New Audience, America, Who Hurt You? was commissioned by Oxford University for its Unfinished Revolutions series, comprising works by Suzan-Lori Parks, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Anna Clyne and Jody Elff, Taylor Mac and Matt Ray, and Lil Buck and Dannielle “Rhimes” Lecointe. It’s part history lesson, part tribute to America’s melting-pot history, and part screed about how we ended up where we are. Some of her comparisons do lean into obvious left-wing judgments and verbiage over the one-hundred-minute performance, but it is an ever-evolving narrative, notably with the midterms approaching. “With the current news cycle, I basically have to rewrite it twice a day,” Jones says. “Like brushing my fucking teeth.”
In 2026 America, even the brand of toothpaste she uses is probably controversial. She’ll find out when she takes her show on the road.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]