Sarah Jones and All Her Characters in “Sell/Buy/Date” Respond to 2016 Election
The award-winning actress and playwright channels some of her characters from the acclaimed Sell/Buy/Date to take on Brexit, the American election, Donald Trump, and how to move forward.
She’s been dubbed a “multicultural mynah bird” for her ability to slip seamlessly into the mind and skin of disparate characters, but what all the people played by the actress and playwright Sarah Jones share in common is a preoccupation with their place in the world.
Her latest creative tour-de-force is Sell/Buy/Date, a look at sex workers in the future now playing at Manhattan Theater Club in New York. Still, it’s really a show about how women—and others—think about the female body, a subject mined with incisive humor by the some-21 characters Jones’s channels as she astonishingly morphs from one to the other.
Given the harrowing aftershocks of the presidential election, Jones is an ideal voice to gauge current reactions to the outcome. After all, she speaks for many. She’s also a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and has performed numerous times at the White House at the invitation of the Obamas.
So, we asked her a few questions—and got lots of answers, from the panel she singly assembled. Among the characters joining her are Bella, the millennial caucasian feminist; Nereida, the fast-talking Latina; Habiba, the Muslim pacifist; and Rashid, the African-American New York hip-hop artist.
“I even brought my own microphone, that’s how I roll,” Rashid says. “I don’t like to be unprepared. Things is mad unpredictable out there.”
See for yourself.
