The Wake

The marquee of the Varsity Theater had one word written on it in early June: Sweat. Further inspection of the advertisement would tell a passerby that “Sweat” is the title of Cory McLeod’s “unmediated glimpse into the lives of sex workers, minus both glamour and stigmatization.” Those curious enough to buy a ticket found themselves on a tour of a fictitious escort service, a tour guided by two sex workers named Brooke and Claire.

Low lights and bossa nova music set the scene for writer and director Cory McLeod’s Minneapolis debut. “Sweat,” which has had successful runs in the South African cities of Cape Town and Johannesburg, is based on conversations that the writer had with prostitutes in South African brothels. “One thing I had to do was be quite persistent. It became a bit more interesting that way,” McLeod told me. “People don’t realize that these women are so bored … eventually they started telling me their stories.”

The play is a theatrical montage in which the actresses, Heidi Berg (Brooke) and Kjersti Brekke (Claire), assumed different roles in the loose network of stories that comprised the plot. These glimpses were intended not only to share the anecdotes of sex workers, but also to demonstrate that there is a human side to the people in this stigmatized line of work, to allow art to speak in ways the prostitutes could not without scrutiny from the larger community.

At times this was accomplished with humor. The play eased the audience into the subject matter, telling jokes about stereotypical customers and sex workers in the opening dialogues. Though instances of humor existed throughout the seventy minute show, as the play built they became overshadowed by the frank, honest testimony being relayed to the audience by the actresses.

The interplay of Borg and Brekke was dynamic. Very rarely were the women seen individually, and this created a bond between the two in the audience’s minds. Whether the women were in their primary roles of Claire and Brooke, or in the countless minor roles of people like Trevor the proprietor and Frank the regular customer, the conversations seemed genuine. With the exception of two chairs, there were no props, and the actresses were responsible for transforming the floor space to suit a particular scene. Body language, voice manipulation and convincing delivery were all vital to the success of this play, and the actors rose to the challenges of this production.

Throughout the performance, the actresses maintained the mindset that they were guiding the audience, bringing them behind the scenes of prostitution. This gave the play continuity and allowed for the suspension of belief. In actuality, what the audience heard wasn’t far from the truth, as one of the writer’s goals was to bring these stories to the public in as pure a form as possible.

Looking right into the eyes of the audience, the women would deliver powerful lines such as, “They could care less if I can pay my rent this month … my body is written in their fantasies.” McLeod’s words the words of South African prostitutes gained weight from the convincing delivery of the actresses.

When asked how he helped the women achieve an understanding for the roles they would be playing, the director said, “We had some very concentrated discussions.” This differs from the original run of the play, in which the actresses had joined him in collecting the stories in the brothels of Cape Town.

Approaching “Sweat” as a piece of documentary media, McLeod was aiming to educate as much as he was to entertain. The play offers a lot in terms of education, ranging from glimpses into the backgrounds and thought processes of a sex worker, to the largely unnoticed legislative battles in Minnesota and across the nation concerning the oldest of professions.

On stage, “Sweat” came across as a project of personal investment, one in which those involved truly hoped their work would help open a dialogue about prostitution and the ideologies of gender. “The play has changed a few opinions,” McLeod remarked. “You never know whose it’s going to change, though.”