Sarah Jones Turns 2024 Podcast Into 100-Minute Off-Broadway Play on 19 American Voices
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Sep 29
Sarah Jones Turns 2024 Podcast Into 100-Minute Off-Broadway Play on 19 American Voices
1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Sep 29
Summary
Sarah Jones has brought her 2024 podcast America, Who Hurt You? to the stage as a 100-minute off-Broadway solo play, using 19 characters to probe U.S. social and psychological strain.
The Tony-winning writer says the project grew from alarm that America was on “death’s door,” expanding interviews on immigration, climate change and the manosphere into a live national “therapy” session.
At Brooklyn’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center through Oct. 4, Jones shifts among figures drawn from her multiracial lineage, from a Holocaust-survivor grandmother to a nationalist white man, while updating the script with the news cycle.
The production also makes the audience part of the performance—asking for participation and ending with a collective breathing exercise—reflecting Jones’s view that democratic “repair” is both personal and political.
Commissioned by Oxford University in 2025 and developed with National Black Theatre, the show next moves to New York’s Under the Radar Festival from Jan. 6 to 24, 2027.