John Chaplin reviews the new production by the radical Contemporary Theatre of Los Angeles, ‘Formation Left,’ about a the life of the unemployed during the Great Depression.

“Formation Left” in Los Angeles’ by John R. Chaplin from New Theatre. Vol. 2 No. 12. December, 1935.

The presentation of Formation Left by the Contemporary Theatre in Los Angeles is an event in the history of the American theatre; it is, we believe, the first time on the Pacific Coast, and one of the few times in American stage annals, that a locally written and produced full-length play, giving an intelligent analysis of contemporary conditions, has been staged outside of New York.

Formation Left presents a cross-section of the dole system. The first act takes place in a relief office. A young Negro boy, whose mother is dying while medical aid fails to come; an Irish mechanic who has failed to make good at ditch-digging on a relief project; a contractor, whose young son refuses to wear “relief pants,” because all the kids in school know where they come from; a boy and girl who can’t get married because their relief budget would dwindle if they did; an old couple who can’t pay their rent–each of these comes to the relief office to tell his story. The narration comes to life on a second stage, behind the main setting, and devised to look like a motion picture screen. The transitions from relief-office to flashback, and then back again, are mechanical and monotonous, but the material presented is so striking that one does not mind the naïveté of the technique.

The second act, with another series of flashbacks, tells the way in which all these various relief-victims, who have been brought together by common sufferings, develop an Unemployed Workers League, and how their united protest and their solidarity with the case-workers succeed in putting across their demands.

Formation Left is a first play by Jeff Kibre and Mildred Ashe, and it suffers from insufficient mastery of stage technique. The influence of Waiting for Lefty and Emjo Basshe’s Doomsday Circus is constantly obvious. The direction, too, by Max Pollock, attempts to bring motion picture methods on to the stage, and finds this to be impossible.

The main defects of Formation Left seem to have resulted from the lack of a strong board of directors of the theatre. There was no one to whip the production into shape on time, or hold off opening until the play was definitely ready; or to impose upon the playwrights and director, collective, constructive advice, which could have added polish to the production as a whole. In place of this, the audience has been treated to the spectacle of a play shaping itself, night after night, until, at the end of a week, it is a stirring performance.

As entertainment, Formation Left has an excellent balance of tragedy and comic effect. It is mainly narrative, without dramatic construction, but it has the weight of a document that even the enemies of the working-class could scarcely avoid recognizing as evidence of the rotting decay of the system. It gives it to you between the eyes. More than this it is a highly acceptable full-length show of an agitational character which makes it the most powerful weapon now at the disposal of Public Works and Unemployed Unions throughout the country. Relief workers who see it, like it; and that means that it succeeds in being the agitational weapon it was meant to be.

The cast of some thirty-odd members is uniformly excellent. Michael Egan and Herb Smith, who carry the two most difficult roles of the play, are standouts. In secondary parts, Edward Walsh, Al Eben, Joseph Reynolds, Rita Steppling, and particularly Lillian Calvari, lend sterling quality to the performance.

With the experience of the Los Angeles production behind them, New Theatre and unemployed groups all over the country, should find Formation Left a perfect choice for early production.

With its organizational faults understood, Contemporary Theatre takes its place as one of America’s outstanding theatre groups. While there have been many plays that have had progressive, revolutionary or socially significant implications, the Pacific Coast, with the exception, of course, of Waiting for Lefty, has never before seen a theatrical document so vital to the development of present day American life as Formation Left.

The New Theatre continued Workers Theater. Workers Theater began in New York City in 1931 as the publication of The Workers Laboratory Theater collective, an agitprop group associated with Workers International Relief, becoming the League of Workers Theaters, section of the International Union of Revolutionary Theater of the Comintern. The rough production values of the first years were replaced by a color magazine as it became primarily associated with the New Theater. It contains a wealth of left cultural history and ideas. Published roughly monthly were Workers Theater from April 1931-July/Aug 1933, New Theater from Sept/Oct 1933-November 1937, New Theater and Film from April and March of 1937, (only two issues).

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/workers-theatre/v2n12-dec-1935-New-Theatre.pdf