Hurt Song

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.

  • Inquire About Rights
  • Recommend
  • Download
  • Save to Library

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.

  • 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.

  • Ricardo Soltero-Brown: Hurt Song

    Svich rounds out her tetralogy with a tale of dwellers in an unloving land, where waste and work are all there is. Stevie dares to connect, but must balance hope with a necessary need to adapt, beleaguered by circumstance, location, and even family. This ability becomes both heartbreaking and inspiring. Friendships and bonds grow and shift against an apocalyptic setting. The onstage collapse of a character is not only one of the play's most striking moments, but a humbling metaphor, an amalgam of all that is struggling before our eyes in the cacophony of our country's strangled cries. Perfect...

    Svich rounds out her tetralogy with a tale of dwellers in an unloving land, where waste and work are all there is. Stevie dares to connect, but must balance hope with a necessary need to adapt, beleaguered by circumstance, location, and even family. This ability becomes both heartbreaking and inspiring. Friendships and bonds grow and shift against an apocalyptic setting. The onstage collapse of a character is not only one of the play's most striking moments, but a humbling metaphor, an amalgam of all that is struggling before our eyes in the cacophony of our country's strangled cries. Perfect poetry.

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