Spread the Love: Sweep Under Rug by Lindsay Price

This week on Spread the Love Lindsay talks about Sweep Under Rug.

Transcript

Welcome to Spread the Love. This week I’m going to talk about Sweep Under Rug. Now, I have a lot of quote un quote light plays in the catalogue, and I have pride in those plays. Through talking to teachers and students is that what I’ve come to learn is that the act of being in a play, any play is what helps students improve their communication, self-expression and self-confidence skills. So when folks throw some scorn my way for those ‘light’ plays, and people do love to do that, I know better.

The other reason I know better is that I know that in-between the light plays I write other kinds of plays, I like a challenge too! Sweep Under Rug is one of those plays. It doesn’t get a lot of productions, it’s a bit of a challenge. It has a heavy subject matter, it doesn’t have a happy ending, it has a small cast. I know, I know, way to sell my own script.

Sweep Under Rug has some really beautiful qualities to it. It deals with the issue of poverty in a very theatrical manner. Issue plays must be theatrical. Sweep takes place in the future, where those who fall under the poverty line are corralled and monitored, and most significantly not allowed to make life better for themselves. The play was inspired by some friends who work with refugees and those below the poverty line who are desperate, and desire and motivated to get out, to move on but stigma, and government red tape hold them back time and time again.

Sweep also has a very specific dialogue style. Sometimes a very challenging style. If you have advanced actors who want to tackle something out of their comfort zone, if you have any actors who want to tackle something outside their comfort zone this is for you. Every character in the play speaks in a very different way. There’s a character who’s losing her hope, and thus begins to lose the ability to form sentences. Very interesting to write. She speaks in fragments and scraps of poems. Another character is a robot who emulates a 1950’s style, so there’s a contrast between the future and the past.

Sweep Under Rug is a great conversation starter for both actors and audience. It gets overshadowed by those light crowd-pleasers, but you and I know better. It was well worth my time to write, and it’ll be well worth your time as well.

That’s it for Spread the Love.