Some might think that visiting the same playwright four times in as many years would get repetitive. Not so with Everyman Theatre’s return to Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work with this month’s Sweat. The play tells the story of a group of friends, family, and coworkers, most ticking multiple boxes on that list, as they deal with the closing of the local mill and the personal and professional consequences that come with it.

A wrenching, compassionate look at people caught in the wake of the financial collapse of the early- and mid-2000s, Sweat looks to the past but feels firmly locked into the present. We all know these people. Some of us are or were these people. While the story plays out in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 2000 and 2008, the conversations and problems could unfold in any working-class bar in any blue-collar town.

In a time when we feel so divided and so at odds with one another, Sweat does not come bearing a message of hope, or unity, or some other seemingly unattainable thing. What it offers instead is a reminder of how we got here in the first place—a chance to understand the frustrations and situations that, allowed to fester and escalate, gave rise to the problems plaguing us today. Maybe, in order to move forward, we first have to look back. Lynn Nottage’s work gives us time to do that.

It’s done through relatable people (in this case, a talented mix of both the resident company and several actors in their Everyman debuts) in the most relatable of places, a local bar. At the end of each day, it plays host to celebrations and screaming matches, moments both triumphant and unspeakable. It’s an extension of these characters’ homes, and in fact is more real and tangible to us than any other location. Its illusion of familiarity can be credited in part to resident set designer Daniel Ettinger, who transformed the Everyman stage into a working pub, complete with taps pouring actual (non-alcoholic, there are lines to be remembered after all) beer, faded local ephemera on the walls, and a jukebox dispensing ’70s and ’80s hits as the stage literally revolves to move from scene to scene.

“I was lucky that the crew at Everyman has been developing their skills in motor control and moving scenery quite a bit lately, which let us pull off a lot of the things that would’ve been very difficult for us the three, four seasons ago,” Ettinger says. “The technical growth of the company has really been exciting lately. It looks simple from out front, but there was a lot of technology going on.”

We caught up with Ettinger to discuss his process, how he created a Reading bar on a Baltimore stage, and what the new setup offers future performances.

Where do you start when preparing to design pieces for a new show?
I absolutely begin with texts and the story that the director and the company is trying to tell and how the visuals of that story can impact an audience and help them understand the events we’re trying to describe to them. I’ve got to go through the script multiple times and look at the intention and requirements and that sort of thing to know what’s going to need to happen in a space. I kind of need that in my head as I began to then look for the inspiration of how to start.

How did you choose what sort of spaces to create for Sweat?
I looked at a lot of research about Reading, Pennsylvania. I was lucky that Deb Hazlett drove up to Reading and she had taken some local photographs as well, but there’s a lot of visuals available. The play deals with serious economic issues and the collapse of the financial infrastructure of the town, but the place where this group of friends is accustomed to going to for years and years, even before the play takes place, was once something that was actually quite nice. It’s very much still a neighborhood bar. It’s not that the financial collapse happened and suddenly the walls fell down.

So we wanted to make sure that there was a real sense of home and almost safety and comfort and familiarity in how the bar feels today. Then I wanted to set it all in some sort of gray void that told you nothing about what was going on outside, but that would just exist in a state of unease so that really the only way to find a place was to come inside the bar. The outside, it was kind of nothing but steel smoke, if you will. I didn’t want to describe the town of Reading or what’s outside the windows. I wanted it to be this mass of gray that all of their lives had been thrust into. And so I wanted to put the set in the middle of that sort of gray box.

What challenges came with designing the different spaces you needed to tell this story?
It all goes back into extreme practical. We were given such a beautiful text, and when you’re given a theater space and you’re given time and money and this really talented staff, choices begin to emerge that would not emerge without all of those elements in place. Coming up with the conceit of the splitting of the other side of the revolve in half for the parole offices and the two apartments for example. And thinking about the revolving terms of the way that it moves time forward and backward, which was really helpful as well. We’ve done some smaller turning pieces on stage before, but this is the first time we’ve done what is nearly as large a turntable as we could fit into the space. We were squeezed in in a way that we’ve not really done before. Just technically speaking, we couldn’t have done this before. Fortunately the revolve has been built to where it comes apart and it can be stored for future seasons. So it’s a real asset.

On top of the regular visuals, you also had to create a working bar for this show. How was that experience?
Yep! It’s tight back there. There’s not a lot of depth. They’re pouring non-alcoholic beers on tap, so there’s a keg and the ice chest, it’s all back there. There’s quite a bit happening behind the bar and a very narrow space when you go through. There’s a little swinging door in the back area of the bar that, when you go in that room, we really feel like we’re in the back storage section of a bar. There are also all those images that are covering the wall, which were done with the help of Jillian Matthews, who’s the prop master there. Except for the few images like the Yuengling labels or the whiskey labels, all of the pictures of the sports teams and the celebrities are people from Reading, Pennsylvania.

You’re working on a couple other shows this season. What upcoming projects are you excited about?
I’ll tell you the approach we’re taking with the holiday show, The Importance of Being Earnest, is just really going to be fun. Capital letters all the way across.The director, Joseph Ritsch, has got a really great visual idea. It’s a great cast and it’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s coming up way too quickly. The other piece I’m doing is called Everything is Wonderful. It’s a story set on an Amish farm. The playwright has been very careful to not be too specific as to where, but we have our thoughts about that. It’s a beautiful, beautiful play. I couldn’t put it down, and I really was moved when I finished the piece.

I feel so lucky that I love telling a wide variety of stories. I’ve been at this for quite a while, and sometimes people ask me, “Well, what else would you like to do?” And I’m like, “Well, no, sorry, this is kind of it.” Every time you sit down with a new play, even a play such as The Importance of Being Earnest, which might not be new, but it’s with a new creative team and the new director, there are new things happening out in the world that change what a play has to offer to an audience.

This weekend, Everyman Theatre opens its second production of the season, Intimate Apparel, which has themes of class, culture, and circumstance. It centers on an African-American seamstress in turn of the century New York, who makes intimate garments for a variety of clients, and shares lingering affections with a Jewish fabric maker. Intimate Apparel’s playwright Lynn Nottage is the first woman to win two Pulitzer Prizes for her work, and this is the third of her plays that Everyman has produced. Everyman Resident Company member Dawn Ursula, who plays the lead Esther, joined us to talk about preparing for the role, the power of live theater, and getting star struck.

This is your third leading role in a Lynn Nottage play at Everyman. Nottage is one of the most acclaimed playwrights around right now, as she won the Pulitzer Prize for drama last year. Are you starting to feel like you know her characters and her style?

That’s a good question. I think with some playwrights and their work, you might be able to say that. But I think what’s so brilliant about Lynn Nottage is how varied her plays are. [Last year’s prize] was the second Pulitzer that she’s won, she won for Ruined previously, and when I think about Ruined [about the plight of women in war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo] versus Intimate Apparel, you could convince me, if I didn’t know better, that different playwrights wrote those plays. She can really craft something so uniquely that you can’t quite peg the way she’s going to channel the story. Although I could find and draw similarities between the characters and their struggles, they are such wonderfully different people. It’s a real joy to be able to start fresh and really begin, asking, “Ok, who is this person? How do they walk in the world?”

Even if they are so different, they seem like such complex characters.

And that’s a gift from the playwright to us as the actors that these characters are so wonderfully human. And when a playwright crafts something like that, you’re able to give it full body, and that’s what makes that much more of an impact on the audience. Human beings are such complex creatures, we can have such empathy and be so brilliant and yet so brutal. She knows how to draw that out.

Do you ever get star struck when you’re performing Nottage’s works because of who she is and the quality of what you’re preforming?

Yes, I can admit to that happening. I think it probably manifests itself in some good, positive nervousness. It’s like, ok, we’re doing a Lynn Nottage play, and we really can’t mess this up, ya’ll, because it’s her. (laughs) There’s a little bit of good intimidation and fear that we’re able to recognize and put into the work, and that drives us all that much more. It’s the same with an August Wilson piece—it’s of that caliber. We recognize how precious it is.

Intimate Apparel has a history in Baltimore. It had its premier at Center Stage in 2003, and Esther seems like a character who could have easily existed here. What’s your process been like researching and preparing to play her?

Luckily for us, we have a director, Tazewell Thompson, who has directed it before, and even the way he conducts rehearsals, he sets up what the world was like for us in Manhattan in 1905. The character of Esther is based off of some facts and information about a relative of Nottage’s, and she puts pretty much all the information you need in the text—which also shows how amazing a playwright she is, because the character is clear because of the circumstances she is going through, what she says, what people say about her.

How do Lynn Nottage characters compare with others you’ve played in terms of how deeply you feel them?

I grow immensely and so quickly affectionate towards the characters that I play, and it’s easy with Lynn Nottage pieces. Even Mama Nadi, the madam in Ruined. I might have my issues with her, but I loved me some Mama Nadi. I will know when Intimate Apparel is done based on how long it takes Esther to leave me alone. Sometimes, when a show is closed and I’m ready to move on, a character will leave me quickly. But others might still be rattling around. With Mama Nadi, I had to ask her to go. I had to be like, “I love you, I’m so glad we got to tell your story, but you need to leave now.”

What’s it like to bring this play at this time in history? And what has really resonated about the story with you?

Hopefully one day this play is done and it’s just done for the beautiful story that it is and it doesn’t feel so timely. But it’s such an immigrant story— it’s about this new country where people want to come and work hard and make a life and be prosperous and fruitful and good and the hardships that they encounter. And then the discrimination and the classicism that occurs and the socio-economic barriers that come up. There are also challenges that these women are experiencing. I fully expect there to be lots of moments in the play when the women in the audience, and hopefully the men too, cringe at the fact that though it’s set in 1905, that incredibly sexist thing that’s happening on stage could happen in 2017. Hopefully, that gives us all pause.

In some ways, I’m sure that’s frustrating, but in other ways, that also serves as a connection point between you and the audience.

I do think about it that way. So much about what the gift of theater is for us to acknowledge and see ourselves where we are and where we want to go. We watch these real people on stage living these lives and it is for us as an audience to take a moment to reflect, to be empathetic, to make a discovery. That’s like a good bowl of chicken soup when you’re sick, and that’s one of the wonderful things that a play like this does.