1 TECHNIQUES FOR CHANGING THE WORLD: THE LEAGUE OF WORKERS THEATRES/NEW THEATRE LEAGUE Copyright Margaret Beth Cherne May 2014 Table of Contents Section One: Progress and Problems Chapter one Beginnings: Roots and Sources 1 Chapter two Launching the Revolution 38 Chapter three Resetting the Stage: Adapting and growth 72 Chapter four Expanding the Front: Ringing down the curtain 112 Section Two: Join our Struggle: Three Affiliates Examined Chicago Repertory Group 135 New Theatre of Philadelphia 157 Red Dust Players 167 Section Three: Theatrical Means: Stage Techniques for Change Introduction 179 The plays: Vaudeville adaptation: Liberty in the U.S.A. 200 Agit-prop: Tempo, Tempo and Mr. Box, Mr. Fox and Mr. Nox 203 Transitional Realism: It’s Funny as Hell and Waiting for Lefty 212 The Brechtian influence: The Cradle Will Rock 230 Anti-fascism in realistic form: Private Hicks 236 Ordinary Americans: Plant in the Sun 239 Conclusion: Commitment: A Double Edged Sword 243 1 CHAPTER ONE ROOTS AND SOURCES “First, [workers theatre] must awaken to class consciousness leading to organization; second, it must go to the masses rather than wait for the masses to come to it; and third, it must have mass appeal.”1 Beginnings A small but fierce readership of theatre artists and activists read these imperatives in the pages of a new magazine, titled Workers Theatre Magazine, in May of 19312. With these bold words, the League of Workers Theatres announced its intent to change the world through theatre performance. The idea struck a chord for while the first run of Workers Theatre was 200 mimeographed 10-cent copies produced for only $11.00, by 1932, a thousand copies were printed each month and by 1935 it claimed to match the circulation of Theatre Arts Monthly, then the leading national theatre magazine.3 The above declaration marked the beginning of a tenacious 10-year run of the League of Workers Theatres (later called the New Theatre League), an ambitious and quixotic effort to transform the “cut throat capitalist system” to one of economic justice through revolutionary theatre. Along the way, League members created new theatrical forms and new ways of delivering political performance, struggled against personal ruin and organizational bankruptcy, and clashed with one another politically and aesthetically. 1 Albert Prentiss. "Basic Principles." 1-2. 2 Literature of the time usually uses the plural form of ‘workers’ rather than the possessive. This book will follow suit. 3 Jay Williams. Stage Left. 46. 3 Political activists and theatre artists who found common cause in the crucible of the Great Depression of the 1930s and who formed the League set as its goal nothing less than radical economic and political change in the United States, replacing the free-market economy and its attendant individualistic values with a Soviet-style workers’ state. This radical goal was a double-edged sword, however; it proved to be the iron strength of the League’s dogged 10-year history while it simultaneously hobbled its ability to survive and grow. Political and theatrical context The League was part of a small community of theatre artists who used theatre for political change; some branches of politicized theatre went back to the late 1800s and organized workers; others developed later and closer to the arts world. The Left theatre movement in the 1930s grew against a background of economic disaster. The stock market crash of 1929 meant devastation for the U.S. economy and for millions of people. During the first three years after the crash, 1929-1931, money spent on industrial construction dropped from $949 million to $74 million. By 1932, 13 million people were unemployed. Shantytowns sprang up across the country, built by people who had been evicted from housing they could no longer afford. The collections of shacks were named “Hoovervilles” after then-President Herbert Hoover.4 In this context, Left political theatre grew alongside broader Leftist ideas. Roosevelt’s record four-term presidency attested to wide-spread support for a reformist, left-leaning leadership. For the Communist connected League core, however, the Democrats were no better than the Republicans - both were capitalists and therefore class 4 William Leuchtenberg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932 - 1940. 1. 3 4 enemies. Support for the radical wing of Left politics increased during those years. Although they were never serious contenders, both the Socialist and the Communist candidates for President received significantly more votes in 1932 than they had in 1928. The Communist ticket of Foster and Ford, for example, doubled its vote, totaling around 48,000 in 1932, and Socialist Norman Thomson received about 448,000 votes.5 The increase reflects disillusionment, perhaps, with the system that had made, and failed to deliver, the great promise of the American Dream. People organized the workplace in larger numbers, as the union movement grew exponentially during the decade, assisted by federal legislation that supported union organizing that was signed into law during the Roosevelt Administration. For example, in 1937, the United Auto Workers’ membership was more than 400,000, up from 30,000 just the previous year. The May Day Parade in New York was “so big,” wrote Malcolm Cowley, “that it had to be divided into two sections.” One section marched from Battery Park north to Union Square; the other from the north. There were 19,000 New York City Police on duty to quell an expected riot, but the day was peaceful.6 A general increase in support for the Left translated to a shift in the arts. Social issues became more central to arts events, which included more and more ‘socially significant’ subject matter. Dance, art, literature, music, photography, and film artists developed similar political sections and later in the 1930s some of those became 5 Harvey Klehr. The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade. 67. 6 Quoted in Michael Denning. The Cultural Front. 54. 4 5 participants in the magazine published by the League7. The League found fertile soil to plant the seeds of radical theatre in the political climate of the Depression years. The urge to do something to change economic conditions bred the convergence of theatre art and political activism. Among the most radical forms of the activism involved, and the one that fueled the organization of the League of Workers Theatres, was revolutionary Communism. The Communist Party of the United States (the C.P.U.S.A.) had strong links to the Party in the U.S.S.R. The Party in Moscow theorized sequential stages in the development of world communism in order to develop policy and plan the work towards a worldwide “workers state.” International Communist policy in the early thirties was termed “Third Period Communism” and it predicted the imminent collapse of capitalism, leading to chaos from which the workers state would naturally arise. The C.P.U.S.A. based its union organizing strategy on the anticipated collapse and the arts were perceived as one of the tools to help it come about. “Art is a weapon,” claimed the Party, in carrying out class warfare. The League of Workers Theatres arose from the ardent conviction that theatre performance could create revolutionary change. The League developed from a pre-existing theatre group, the Workers Laboratory Theatre (W.L.T.). According to Jay Williams, a participant who wrote a lively memoir of his time with radical Left theatre in the Depression era8, a rather unlikely group of people established the W.L.T. in 1929. They followed the example of the Prolet-Buehne, the premier political theatre in New York at the time. John Bonn, a German immigrant and founding member of the C.P.U.S.A., headed the Prolet-Buehne, which performed 7 See Herbert Kline’s New Theatre and Film: 1934-1937 for background and information on the magazine itself; and Michael Denning’s The Cultural Front, which discusses several key developments in U.S. culture in a broad context of politicized art. 8 Jay Williams’ given name was Harold Jacobsen. It was as Jacobsen that he acted in W.L.T. productions. 5 6 innovative political sketches in German.9 W.L.T. members wanted to offer similar performances in English. Surprisingly, the founders of the W.L.T. had little experience in theatre, but they were intensely interested in working with the Prolet-Buehne’s new type of performance as a positive force for change. Among W.L.T. founding members were the brothers Jack and Hyam Shapiro, who were by trade metal casters; Alfred Saxe, from Illinois by way of the University of Wisconsin Experimental School and its drama programs; Harry Elion, an economics graduate from City College of New York; Al Prentiss, an engineer; and Bernard Reines, a would-be playwright.10 W.L.T. aspirations paralleled the Prolet-Beuhne’s goals of generating change from within the working class. All members of the W.L.T. subscribed to Leftist political positions, and by connecting with John Bonn’s Prolet-Buehne, they associated directly with the Communist movement. The mix of backgrounds distinctly lacked focused preparation in theatre. Saxe had encountered avant-garde forms of theatre when he was a student at the University in Madison, Wisconsin, and Reines had an interest in playwriting, but none came from strong theatrical roots. Perhaps they saw theatre as a skill anyone could learn, like the ability to wield a hammer or run a machine. The group certainly created an organization that used theatre as a tool for shaping the political and economic world, and it welcomed participants based upon their dedication to the cause first and foremost; artistic talent, although certainly desired, was secondary.