This is Reading

Lynn Nottage won a Pulitzer Prize, her second, for her play Sweat. When writing it she spent years getting to know the city of Reading, PA, where Sweat is set. Reading is the perfect embodiment of the rust belt.

The rust belt is an area of the the U.S. which had at one time been amongst the most wealthy in the world but when industrialization moved elsewhere fell upon hard times. Ms. Nottage’s play taps into the sense of desperation pervasive in parts of The States.

While she used this sense of loss to draw a larger picture she also found a sense of local pride and determination to build new community. As a gesture of appreciation she created the project This is Reading to acknowledge this spirit and thank Reading.

This is Reading is a performance and community event. It transformed the Franklin Railway Station inside and out into a festival celebrating the town.

When a citizen arrived at the piece they found the outside of the station festooned with lights and with huge faces of all the peoples of Reading projected on its side. Inside were artistic and historical installation. There was food and an outdoor stage where local musicians and storytellers performed The centerpiece of the event was a performance inside the main waiting room. A multimedia melange of video, music, historical characters and anecdotes told by community members recorded minutes before, the show was a sensory powerhouse and sold out as many performances as we could fit in.

We managed the entire production of the project. the installation and development lasted over a month and ran for as long. The reaction from the community was very positive, ecstatic wouldn’t be too strong a word.  The lines between participants and audience were very fine with local people performing and doing a lot of the production.

It was really a project where you felt the objectives were noble and far over delivered.