Hurt Song

by Caridad Svich

2020 Finalist for Kitchen Dog Theater New Works Festival.

You pick through trash, you are trash, says someone. How do you find your worth in a land that tells you otherwise? This is the ballad of the hurting kind – those displaced from their homes, looking for work and sent to places in the middle of the country to make their way. Call it a story about climate refugees. Or we can just call this a fable for dark...

2020 Finalist for Kitchen Dog Theater New Works Festival.

You pick through trash, you are trash, says someone. How do you find your worth in a land that tells you otherwise? This is the ballad of the hurting kind – those displaced from their homes, looking for work and sent to places in the middle of the country to make their way. Call it a story about climate refugees. Or we can just call this a fable for dark times. This is the third play in the AMERICAN PSALM seven-play cycle that began with RED BIKE.

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Hurt Song

Recommended by

  • Kitchen Dog Theater: Hurt Song

    We are pleased to support this play! It was a Finalist for the 2020 New Works Festival at Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, Texas.

    We are pleased to support this play! It was a Finalist for the 2020 New Works Festival at Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, Texas.

  • Brad Norris: Hurt Song

    As with all the plays in Ms. Svich's American Psalm Cycle, Hurt Song digs deep into a part of the current American zeitgeist that few authors have been able to capture so completely and poetically. With tones of environmentalism, workers rights, displacement, human kindness and dignity, Svich hits hard at the core of what it is to live precariously at this moment of economic, moral, and political selfishness. Her poetry is moving and complex, and her world is rich and vibrant even in it's garbage-centered surroundings. Svich's truths are always profound, moving, and passionate, and Hurt Song...

    As with all the plays in Ms. Svich's American Psalm Cycle, Hurt Song digs deep into a part of the current American zeitgeist that few authors have been able to capture so completely and poetically. With tones of environmentalism, workers rights, displacement, human kindness and dignity, Svich hits hard at the core of what it is to live precariously at this moment of economic, moral, and political selfishness. Her poetry is moving and complex, and her world is rich and vibrant even in it's garbage-centered surroundings. Svich's truths are always profound, moving, and passionate, and Hurt Song is no exception.

  • Franky D. Gonzalez: Hurt Song

    There's a lot of hurt to be felt in HURT SONG. There's a lot of hope too. There's a lot to take in with the state of America and our decay and dehumanization. It's as if HURT SONG is that call to alarm for the forgotten of this country. Outside of our office and academic jobs are the suffering and the abandoned. Caridad Svich shows economic waste caused by land displacement and displacement from technological progress. Svich approaches a difficult subject and returns rightful dignity to the suffering in this magnificent, poetic drama about the lost and hopeless in America.

    There's a lot of hurt to be felt in HURT SONG. There's a lot of hope too. There's a lot to take in with the state of America and our decay and dehumanization. It's as if HURT SONG is that call to alarm for the forgotten of this country. Outside of our office and academic jobs are the suffering and the abandoned. Caridad Svich shows economic waste caused by land displacement and displacement from technological progress. Svich approaches a difficult subject and returns rightful dignity to the suffering in this magnificent, poetic drama about the lost and hopeless in America.

View all 4 recommendations

Development History

  • Type Reading, Organization The Lark, Year 2018

Production History

  • Type High School, Organization Contra Costa School of Performing Arts, Year 2022

Awards

  • Maxim Mazumdar New Play Prize
    Alleyway Theatre Inc.
    Finalist
    2020
  • Steppenwolf Theatre The Mix
    Steppenwolf Theatre
    Selection
    2018