In the decade of the 1930's, the workers’ theatre movement
developed, influenced at least in part by the agitprop theatre of Russian
communism. The Russians used agitprop theatre, which were short pieces for
mobile theatre units; they often had chants, they tried to agitate audiences
to defy capitalism and accept communism and to accept the idea that the
proletarian (the common worker) will rise. The Russian Communist agitprop
theatre also used mass presentations, presentational acting, plotlessness
(as in Epic Theatre), and montages to get their ideas across (click here
for some photos).
Somewhere around 1929, the first truly agitprop theatre
groups in the United States emerged: the Prolet-Büehne, a German-language
troupe, and the English-language troupe calling itself the Workers’ Laboratory
Theatre. By 1932, both of these groups helped form a loose-knit organization
of left-wing theatres called the League of Workers’ Theatres. The League
of Workers’ Theatres published a newsletter /magazine called Workers’
Theatre; by 1935, the organization became known as the New Theatre League,
and their magazine was called New Theatre . Both magazines
discussed theory and practice of workers’ theatre, with a firm belief that
"art is a weapon" (click here
to read the lyrics of a short musical agit-prop play called "Art is
a Weapon").
Besides agit-prop plays and, later in the decade, plays of "socialist
realism" (works attempting to be of high artistic significance dealing
with the heroic struggle of the proletariat and of the victory of socialism).
The workers' theatre movement also presented a number of skits/plays
with music, some of which could actually be called musicals--perhaps most
well-known include the following:
The Cradle Will Rock
(while rehearsed and originally funded by the Federal Theatre Project, Cradle
was actually presented without the FTP's approval--the story is on
the next page -- The Federal Theatre Project).
Pins and Needles (click
here
for the lyrics to its most famous song -- and which became a sort of rallying
cry for the movement),
and Johnny
Johnson (this link will lead you to another page of links
about the show).
(I
discuss workers' theatre musicals in detail in my
dissertation).
Other workers' theatres arose: the Theatre of Action/Shock
Troupe, an offshoot of the W. L. T., the Theatre Collective, and the Theatre
Union, founded in 1933, and becoming the first professional workers’ theatre
in 1935. We might also mention the Group Theatre, more famous for its acting
training than for its left-wing theatre, but it did produce Clifford
Odets’s Waiting for Lefty, considered one of the best agitprop
plays of the period. The Workers’ Theatre Movement
declined after 1935; the economy was showing greater prosperity, the pro-Communism
movement aligned itself with anti-fascism and the development became known
as the Popular Front. Leftism merged with liberalism, and the purposes for
which the Workers’ Theatre Movement developed itself seemed less pressing.
