Sweat

Reading Check and Short Answer questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Act 1

Reading Check

1. What did Jason acquire on his face in prison?

2. Tracey asks Oscar how she can hire someone to do what?

3. What opportunity does Cynthia mention that she is considering going after?

4. Chris tells Jason the news that he has been accepted into a college program and plans to become what?

5. Where did Stan obtain his permanent limp?

6. What reason does Tracey imply is why Cynthia got the promotion over her?

7. Tracey tells Oscar that the job at the factory is what?

8. In Scene 6, who is waiting alone at the bar for others to show up and celebrate her birthday?

9. The characters are upset because one of the workers stopped at the factory to discover what?

10. What was posted on the factory door?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What happened when Jason and Chris ran into each other?

2. Why did Cynthia get arrested in her own home?

3. How does Jason react to Chris’s news about getting into school?

4. What has happened to Brucie’s job and place of employment?

5. What condition does Cynthia place on allowing Brucie back into her life?

6. Why does Tracey get angry when Oscar tells her about the flyer?

7. What does Tracey tell Oscar about her grandfather?

8. According to Jessie, why aren’t Cynthia and Tracey getting along?

9. What rumor does Tracey ask Cynthia about, and how does Cynthia respond?

10. What is Brucie’s advice for the factory workers who are now locked out?

Paired Resource

 “Faces of Poverty: Struggling to Make it in Reading, Pennsylvania”

• This video can help students to see what poverty and joblessness looks like in Reading, Pennsylvania, to aid in visualizing the characters and their circumstances realistically. This is especially helpful if students are looking at the play with an eye toward production.
• Connects to the theme The Human Cost of Production (and Outsourcing)
• If you were producing Sweat, what takeaways could you gain from watching this video?

Act 2

Reading Check

1. Jason is upset when Tracey only has what to offer him?

2. Who does Cynthia blame for her son, Chris, having been incarcerated?

3. According to Cynthia, where are the machines?

4. Tracey recalls starting a fight with a woman in Atlantic City for what?

5. What does Tracey ask Cynthia to do alongside the workers?

6. Chris tells his father, Brucie, about his memory of Brucie being strong where?

7. What does Stan ask Tracey to do when she orders a drink that reflects his new policy?

8. What does Stan suggest that Chris and Jason do while they’re still young?

9. What does Evan tell Jason is the useless emotion that will eat him alive?

10. Since the plant closed, who are the primary clientele at the bar at the end of the play?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does Jason discover about his mother, Tracey, when he sees her after getting out of prison?

2. Why is everyone shouting at Cynthia at the beginning of Scene 2?

3. What does Cynthia say will be the conditions for everyone to get their jobs back?

4. Cynthia is starting to realize that management gave her this promotion for what reason?

5. Why does Tracey remind Cynthia of the incident in Atlantic City?

6. How does Brucie describe his experience of the strike a few days earlier?

7. What has Oscar done that Stan tells him will likely enrage the bar regulars who work at the factory?

8. What is the unintended consequence of Chris and Jason’s physical altercation with Oscar?

9. Where does Jason tell Evan he is living, and why did he end up there?

10. Who is doing the work of running the bar at the end of the play, and why?

Paired Resource

“How the Great Recession Changed American Workers”

• In this podcast and article, experts at the University of Pennsylvania discuss the recession of 2008 and how it affected workers.
• This connects to the themes of The Human Cost of Production (and Outsourcing) and Shame, Blame, and Scapegoating.
• How might understanding the recession of 2008 help you to better understand the anger between some of the characters in Sweat?

“Sweat on Broadway”

• This Playbill Online database page documents the original Broadway production of Sweat at Studio 54 in 2017.
• On this page, students can find production and attendance statistics, videos, photos, awards, and the pages of the Playbill itself.
• Playbill’s synopsis of the play includes the statement “Promotions and pride inevitably collide.” Do you think this collision was inevitable for Cynthia and Tracey?

Recommended Next Reads 

Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 by Anna Deveare Smith

• In this docudrama, Anna Deveare Smith explores the riots in LA that followed the not guilty verdict of the four police officers who brutally beat Rodney King during a traffic stop. Smith interviewed hundreds of people surrounding the incident, and she created a one-woman show using their words as powerful verbatim theatre.
• Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 on SuperSummary

Ruined by Lynn Nottage

• Using a similar methodology to the one she used for Sweat, Nottage spent time in East Africa interviewing Congolese women to write her Pulitzer Prize–winning play about the plight of women in a war-torn region where rape is used as a weapon of war.
• Ruined on SuperSummary