Sarah Jones has a lot to say. So much so that she’s created over a dozen characters to get her point across. America, Who Hurt You? began as a podcast after the 2024 election, but as Jones says, “it also turned into a live interactive experience because, I think we all realized, part of how we got here was the silos, the isolation, the doom-scrolling, the digital dementia.”
Presented by Theatre for a New Audience and National Black Theatre, Jones brings a wildly diverse array of characters to life with little more than a mic and a single video camera. Among them are Lorraine, a kvelling elder from the white side of Jones’s family; Nereida, based on her Caribbean cousins; and America herself, portrayed as an anxiety-ridden Gen Zer in the midst of an identity crisis.
It wants better content.
A nation in progress
Jones, who won a special Tony Award for her solo show Bridge & Tunnel 20 years ago, continues to unpack, then piece together our shared humanity. To try to articulate the depth of her precision—in voice, body, and lived experience—feels like a disservice to the artist and Eric Ting’s sharp direction. It must be experienced.
That being said, a few gems deserve mention. Rashid, a Black male who feels “compelled to enter the chat,” teaches us the definition of kakistocracy—“government by the worst.” Or when big sister Britain calls out America for its waste trade policies, including shipments to the Philippines.
Later, Britain says to a petulant, phone-addicted America, “[I]t is said that in human families, pain travels through the generations until someone is willing to feel it; I believe that’s true for countries as well.” But despite the prognosis, Jones reminds us that the Declaration of Independence is a work in progress.
In the evening’s final moments, Jones invites the audience into a collective physical gesture, reminding us, “you are each your own unfinished revolution.” The weight of that offering, in a country on a crash course for self-destruction with a president whose administration would rather demolish one of our greatest cultural institutions if his name doesn’t appear on it, feels nearly unbearable to carry.
But Jones, who’s built a career by diving headfirst into other people’s voices, proves otherwise.
Is ‘America, Who Hurt You?’ worth seeing?
In a year when patriotism has turned into a fight to the death, Sarah Jones offers something sturdier: a dozen-plus characters, one therapeutic intervention, and a hand-on-heart finale that asks a room of strangers to pledge allegiance to one another.
- Theatre for a New Audience at Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn
- Notable performer: Sarah Jones (writer and sole performer)
- Running time: One hour and 40 minutes, no intermission
- Performances through Oct. 4, 2026
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