With this anthology of six plays, Lee Papa reintroduces readers
and performers to a largely forgotten American theatrical genre
from the 1920s and 1930s, the workers' theatre movement. In an
introduction that gives background on the workers' theatre movement
and traces its influence on American drama, from David Mamet and
August Wilson to the work of Anna Deavere Smith and Vermont's Bread
and Puppet Theatre, Papa explains the criteria for his selection of
plays. Papa's section introductions provide historical, cultural,
and literary context for each of the plays.
The first two plays in the anthology Processional by John Howard
Lawson and Upton Sinclair's Singing Jailbirds reflect the
large-scale arrests of strikers and union organizers during and
after World War I. The next two plays were produced at labor
colleges. Bonchi Friedman's 1926 play, The Miners, combines
expressionism and realism in a drama about a violent strike that
has an unusual female union leader as its hero. In Mill Shadows by
Tom Tippett, a town changes from a simple industrial village into a
place of rebellion and eventually a union community.
The last two plays are representative of those produced by the
International Ladies Garment Workers Union. In contrast to Irwin
Swerdlow's one-act agitprop In Union There Is Strength, the musical
revue Pins and Needles until Oklahoma the longest-running musical
on Broadway is a collection of satirical sketches that parodies
workers' theatre while simultaneously taking on serious issues like
the treatment of blue- and white-collar workers and the rise of
fascism overseas."
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