From Tony Award®–winning visionary and comedian Sarah Jones comes a sneak-peek of her newest show in development: a one-woman performance celebrating the caregiving work that makes all other work possible. Inspired by Caring Across Generations’s movement to change the way Americans value and support care, “The Cost of Not Caring” brings to life a medley of characters often inspired by Jones’ real-life, multiracial family. These voices represent a span across class, culture, ability, gender and generations as they navigate the joy, frustrations and hilarity of providing and receiving care.
Jones will perform a 45-minute version of her work-in-progress show this August and September 2024. The tour begins in Chicago at Resolution Studios on Sunday, August 18th, followed by stops in Atlanta at The Loft at Center Stage on Sunday, September 15th and in Detroit at St. Andrews on Thursday, September 19th.
“‘The Cost of Not Caring’ is one way I hope to pay tribute to the caregivers in my life,” said Jones. “From my grandmother and mother to my various aunties of different cultural backgrounds, my family was filled with caregivers. And in my adult life, after a bad accident and various health issues I received care both at home and in facilities. I hope audiences will see their own care workers, tías, bubbes and pops in the characters I portray, and celebrate the people who are the backbone of our communities and our country.”
Millions of people across the U.S. are struggling to find and afford care, leaving family caregivers to fill the gaps. More than one in five adults in the U.S. provide unpaid care for older adults or disabled people in their lives.
“Coming up together in the 1990s, Sarah and I wished we could have seen our multigenerational families reflected in the TV, movies and culture around us,” said Ai-jen Poo, co-founder and executive director of Caring Across Generations, who began organizing domestic workers in New York City as Jones was performing at poetry slams in the Lower East Side. “Dramatizing the inner lives of people who do the essential work that sustains our communities, as ‘The Cost of Not Caring’ does, has the power to transform our relationship to aging, illness and disability. Sarah and I believe that art can change how we as a society collectively value and support people who have care responsibilities or needs.”
Jones’s tour is part of “Care on Tour,” a larger summer storytelling and advocacy initiative by Caring Across Generations and partners that also includes a bus tour across Georgia, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This unified effort aims to amplify the urgent need for affordable, accessible care across the nation by taking care stories, education and action on the road ahead of the election, and inspiring collective action.