Somewhere behind Sarah Jones’s sternum lives a whole cast of people, each waiting for their turn to speak. As a performer, Jones has an unusual ability to bring those characters to life. One moment she is herself. Seconds later, she becomes someone entirely different, changing her voice, posture, rhythm and point of view without breaking the connection between them.
She puts that skill at the centre of “America, Who Hurt You?”, her new solo show at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn.
The starting point is Jones’s own family, which she describes as multiracial and, with affection, dysfunctional. She uses it as a small-scale version of the country itself.
“What is America if not one massive, multiracial, dysfunctional family?” Jones asks. Her answer is to treat the nation as a family in need of therapy rather than as a problem to be abandoned.
The idea gives the show its central conceit. America becomes a vain, immature teenager, permanently attached to a golden smartphone and resistant to self-examination. Britain appears as the concerned older sibling, delivering the intervention with stiff politeness.
“America, I love you,” Britain tells her, “but you are at a frightful bottom.”
Jones has previously explored social identity through solo performance, including her Tony Award-winning “Bridge & Tunnel” in 2006. Her latest work grows out of her podcast of the same name and was co-commissioned by Oxford University, where it premiered last spring.
Eric Ting directs the production for the National Black Theater and Theater for a New Audience.
Jones describes the show as a work in progress, and its current form reflects that. The therapy scenes sometimes feel forced, while the structure occasionally stretches further than the material requires. The humor does not always land with the same precision as the performances.
The characters, however, are where the production becomes compelling.
Jones moves through Americans from different generations, communities and backgrounds, exploring how personal experiences shape their relationship with the country.
Nereida, a Dominican and Puerto Rican woman, moves naturally between Spanish and English. Her nervous humor includes a remark about how “gentrified” it feels to sit with the audience inside a Shakespeare theater.
Rashid, a Black man, refuses to participate in what he calls the “trauma Olympics.” His frustration is direct. He tells the white people around him that they need to help repair the country’s problems.
Then there is Lorraine, a Holocaust survivor who fled Europe with her family and remains deeply grateful to the United States for offering them refuge. She becomes one of the show’s clearest voices for understanding Jones’s larger purpose.
Jones is trying to make people see one another, Lorraine suggests. If they do, perhaps they have a chance to heal.
The ambition also creates a difficult artistic question. Jones performs characters whose ethnic and cultural backgrounds differ from her own. The boundaries around such impersonation have changed since “Bridge & Tunnel,” when she portrayed immigrant characters from communities outside her personal experience.
In “America, Who Hurt You?”, Jones approaches those characters with restraint rather than caricature. Her rapid movement between identities is less about claiming their experiences than about placing different American stories in the same theatrical space.
The characters span centuries and regions, from the antebellum South to a future-facing California. Some scenes confront historical trauma directly. Others are quieter.
One of the most affecting characters is a gay man in 1980s Chicago caring for his dying Japanese immigrant mother. The scene slows the production down. There is no broad joke or theatrical flourish to soften it. The relationship is intimate, sad and restrained.
Those quieter moments reveal what Jones is reaching for.
She wants the show to contain conflicting versions of America at once. Immigrants and descendants of immigrants. Black Americans and white Americans. Older generations and younger ones. People who feel betrayed by the country and people who remain grateful to it.
The production does not yet have the tonal consistency or dramatic weight to make every part of that ambition land. Some sections feel more like sketches than fully developed scenes.
Still, Jones remains the show’s strongest argument.
Watching her move between characters, I felt the distance between their experiences shrink without disappearing. She does not make them agree. She puts them in the same room.
“America, Who Hurt You?” is still developing. Its rough edges are visible. So is its larger purpose.
It is a performance about a country trying to understand the people who make it, and about whether listening to one another is still possible when the family has spent years arguing.