Just one example of the incredibly rich tradition of Finnish radicalism in the U.S.

‘Finnish Workers Theatre Groups’ by Martin Mattila from New Masses. Vol. 5 No. 7. December, 1929.

Here in Superior, Wis., although this is not a large place as far as the Finnish people are concerned, we have a dramatic group, and director to whom a regular salary is paid. The director is also the janitor of the hall this time; but we have had a paid director only for plays.

There are from forty to sixty members in the dramatic club and whenever there is a need, the director may always call new members from the parent society.

Plays are shown, the whole-night, three-to-five-act plays a month, preferably on Sunday night. Comedy draws the larger audiences, and musical comedies are very popular.

Plays are picked from the literature of the world, that is, in translations. German and French plays are usually the most interesting. Also original Finnish plays are presented. Plays are selected with a view to their value to the working class: Hauptmann’s The Weavers used to be a favorite at one time. The Finnish playwrights in this country have written some excellent plays from such subjects as the class war in Finland, industrial wars in this country, etc.

Most of our plays are rented from the Finnish Federation in New York.

Then we have two choral societies, one for male voices and one for mixed voices. During the summer these clubs were not active, but there are signs that they will take up the work again. A concert or two is given every year and program is furnished to vaudeville entertainments, that is, of our own.

We had a lecturer or two last winter, lecturing on Leninism, co-operation, etc. and most likely will do something of the kind during the coming winter also.

In the cultural work the class lines are always followed or observed.

I visited the local Workers’ Hall Theatre a week or two ago when they presented a four-act drama, A Blow, by H. Bataille, a Frenchman. I was surprised at the good acting. Much time and work had been given to rehearsing the play.

We also have the Little Theatre here. We have realized that to combat it we must organize’ the Workers’ Theater and present plays not only in Finnish, but also in English. In fact the local Communist league has presented plays in English, and it may form a nucleus from which to build up a regular institution. They are now concerned in actual fight for free speech here to give much attention to such cultural work, but they realize the value of drama and during the coming winter they will sponsor many such big occasions.

In the youth I see the element in which the old nationalist–Finnish, Swedish, German, etc. cultural or art work can find its logical successors. With the present generation the national languages are passing away, and unless the young workers step in place, the national “cultures” are passing away too, like the Indian “cultures” have passed.

Now about the League Comrade Gold proposed to establish. Why not enlarge the scope of the Finnish Dramatic League and make it a Workers’ National Dramatic League? They have the experience already and they already have some suitable plays also in English. I suggest that you get in touch with them.

During the last two or three years, several dramatic courses have been held all over the country, but especially in upper Minnesota, upper Wisconsin and upper Michigan where the Finnish workers are more centered in mining, lumbering and farming industries, and where they have numerous large halls with fairly good stage equipment. According to Comrade Niilo Terho of Superior, Wisconsin, who conducted ten or more courses, the average enrollment was sixty students, all very enthusiastic and wanting to prolong the courses over the fixed period of two to four weeks.

The curriculum included lectures on the history of the dramatic art from the earliest known periods; lectures on aesthetics; relation of art to class struggle; short review of grammar; recitation, in theory and practice; makeup and costumes; expression by colors; theory and practice in scenery; practical training in acting, etc.

Those clubs that have had the courses are the most active not only in dramatic work but in all kinds of workers’ cultural work, and there is a demand for additional courses even from places where such have already been held.

This only shows that workers would rather create their own art than forever contend with the sickly movie, where they see only the imaginary world of the plutocrats and not the realities of life

Let us get up and build the Workers Theatre everywhere!

Superior, Wis.

The New Masses was the continuation of Workers Monthly which began publishing in 1924 as a merger of the ‘Liberator’, the Trade Union Educational League magazine ‘Labor Herald’, and Friends of Soviet Russia’s monthly ‘Soviet Russia Pictorial’ as an explicitly Communist Party publication, but drawing in a wide range of contributors and sympathizers. In 1927 Workers Monthly ceased and The New Masses began. A major left cultural magazine of the late 1920s and early 1940s, the early editors of The New Masses included Hugo Gellert, John F. Sloan, Max Eastman, Mike Gold, and Joseph Freeman. Writers included William Carlos Williams, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Day, John Breecher, Langston Hughes, Eugene O’Neill, Rex Stout and Ernest Hemingway. Artists included Hugo Gellert, Stuart Davis, Boardman Robinson, Wanda Gag, William Gropper and Otto Soglow. Over time, the New Masses became narrower politically and the articles more commentary than comment. However, particularly in it first years, New Masses was the epitome of the era’s finest revolutionary cultural and artistic traditions.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1929/v05n07-dec-1929-New-Masses.pdf