Lisa McCune stars in Sweat by Lynn Nottage at Sydney Theatre Company, an insight into de-industrial America
Lisa McCune doesn't feel uncomfortable playing a difficult character in Sweat: "Everybody knows I'm not like that." (Supplied: STC/Joanna Shuen)
When Lisa McCune is acting in a play, or even in a musical, there's always a line that sticks with her.
In the case of Sweat, on now at Sydney Theatre Company, it's the last line of the play: "That's how it oughta be."
"It just makes me want to bawl my eyes out," she says. "It encapsulates the play. It encapsulates life. It's beautiful."
Sweat is directed by Zindzi Okenyo, who McCune praised for bringing out the rhythm and music in Nottage's play. (Supplied: STC/Prudence Upton)
The way things "oughta be" is something McCune's character, Tracey, has strong opinions about.
It's 2000. Tracey works in a steel factory in Reading, Pennsylvania, in the crumbling Rust Belt of the United States, where her family has lived since the 20s. It's a city on the cusp of de-industrialisation, with manufacturing jobs moving offshore.
Tracey thinks you've got to know someone to get a job at the factory: She got in because her father worked there and now her son, Jason, works there too.
When her African American friend, Cynthia (played by Paula Arundell), is promoted to management, Tracey resents her success and attributes it to affirmative action.
She thinks Cynthia should be on the side of the workers on the factory floor, who are locked in a pay dispute with their employers. And when the factory starts to bring in migrant workers to replace the unionised workforce, she thinks scabs ought to be punished.
Tracey's thoughts about how things "oughta be" are brought to vivid — and violent — life in Sweat, which won American playwright Lynn Nottage her second Pulitzer Prize, in 2017.
On ABC RN's The Stage Show, Nottage said of Sweat: "When people are facing economic stress, they look for people to blame and the low-hanging fruit in America tend to be people of colour." (Supplied: Ensemble/Lynn Savarese)
"She's a character who almost thought things might never change," says McCune. "But then the change started happening around her, and maybe she didn't want to evolve with it or change with it.
"So much of her journey is operating from fear, but I think there's an intense love there too. We've talked a lot about love: people fight for what they love."
De-industrialisation and Trump
When Sweat debuted Off-Broadway in 2016, the Wall Street Journal dubbed it the "play that explains Trump's win".
Commissioned to write about American revolutions by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Nottage landed on the "de-industrial revolution" in America. She visited Reading in 2011, which then had a poverty rate of more than 40 per cent, and interviewed the mayor, factory workers and people living in an unhoused camp in the woods.
That depth of research makes the writing in Sweat — especially the passion and frustration of the factory workers, from Tracey to Cynthia, to their sons, James and Chris — ring true.
It remains especially poignant off the back of Trump's second election victory last week.
The president-elect even held one of his final campaign rallies in Reading, where he spoke to some of Tracey's concerns, calling for the mass deportation of illegal immigrants and promising to "bring thousands of factories back to America and back to Pennsylvania".
As it did in 2016, that message clearly galvanised working-class voters, with Trump declaring in his victory speech that his second term would be a "golden age of America".
"That's what the people in this play are holding onto: the American dream. They believe in it," says McCune.
And audiences will be able to find insight into the conditions that led to this moment in the United States.
"We can look back and see how we got to where we are today," says McCune.
"Because the play is accurate on a lot of levels: about the mills shutting down and how things have changed; how businesses were starting to shut down to service the stock market … But at what cost? It's about the human cost.
To prepare for Sweat, the cast visited the steelworks at Port Kembla, south of Sydney, where they spoke to factory workers. (Supplied: STC/Prudence Upton)
"Economic [trouble] can fracture families and destroy friendships … But there's more to [the play] than politics; the play is about the humans in it."
While Sweat is mostly set in 2000, there is also a thread of the play set in 2008, in the wake of the global financial crisis, which will resonate with a lot of people in Australia now.
"The economy and inflation are really scary for a lot of people at the moment," says McCune. "That heat is what this play is about. It's the sweat, it's about the Rust Belt, it's about the workers and their heritage."
From musicals to Sweat
McCune grew up wanting to be a marine biologist or an astronaut, not an actor. "I just wanted to be everything as a kid," she says.
But she recalls seeing Les Misérables as a turning point, inspiring in her a love of musical theatre that she's carried throughout her career, including into lead roles in The Sound of Music and South Pacific.
In South Pacific, McCune played navy nurse Nellie Forbush, who, like Tracey in Sweat, can be racist. "Going there with theatre is really important," she says, of examining prejudice on stage. (Supplied: Opera Australia/Jeff Busby)
"I came to acting because I loved the power of music," she says.
"I found my pack when I started hanging out with actors and going into the arts; my group of people that I liked being with."
McCune graduated from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) with a degree in music theatre.
By 22, McCune had landed what may still be her most well-known role: Constable Maggie Doyle in long-running police drama Blue Heelers, which earned her four Gold Logies over seven seasons.
But despite success on screen — including later projects like Sea Patrol and How to Stay Married — McCune always found herself drawn back to the theatre.
Most recently, she starred in Bob Dylan jukebox musical Girl from the North Country, which toured around Australia. Set in the Great Depression in Minnesota, the play follows a man trying to run a struggling guesthouse while also caring for his wife Elizabeth (played by McCune), who has dementia.
"I love a musical. I'd happily step back and do any musical," says McCune. (Pictured McCune and Peter Kowitz in Girl from the North Country.) (Supplied: GWB/Daniel Boud)
"I'm glad that I did that play before I did this play, because there's echoes of hardship in each of them," she says. "I feel like that was maybe a good warm-up for Sweat."
Sharing people's stories
While her love of musical theatre has held steady, McCune says what's really changed over the years is her level of ambition. Unlike Tracey in Sweat, she feels happy for other people when they're cast over her.
"There's definitely less work as you get older, although there's amazing women and actors pushing through that," she says.
"[But] I'm not as overtly ambitious as I was when I was young … I'm in my 50s now, so there's just more in my life going on."
McCune says her ambition now mostly lies behind the camera, in bringing other people's stories to life. To do that, she recently set up a production company with director Fiona Banks, called Broadstory.
"I love people. I love hearing people's stories," she says.
"I find humans and the way people carry out their lives [so fascinating]. I find it really interesting the way people are affected by choice and how that can change the direction of a life."
McCune denies rumours that Broadstory might produce a Blue Heelers reboot: "We're looking at new stuff." (Pictured: McCune with Martin Sacks in Blue Heelers.) (Supplied: Seven Network)
The Broadstory team now also includes screenwriter Greg Haddrick, who has a project in development about the invention of Wi-Fi — the world-changing technology that researchers at Australia's CSIRO began working on in the late 80s.
"We're being pretty selective about what we do, but God, I love it," says McCune.
"You meet so many great people, and you want to bring them in … I love stepping into a story room and working with writers and trawling through old stories."
Inspired by the work of her young Sweat co-stars, Gabriel Alvarado, James Fraser and Tinashe Mangwana, McCune is also excited to create opportunities for the next generation of emerging talent.
"Maybe that's why I'm doing Broadstory as well because I'm excited about what I see around me."
Sweat is at Sydney Theatre Company until December 22.