Mark Marvin reviews the performances during the 2nd National Workers’ Theatre Festival held in Chicago during April, 1934.

‘Workers’ Theatre Marches’ by Mark Marvin from New Masses. Vol. 11 No. 6. May 8, 1934.

THE revolutionary theatres of the United States held their second National Theatre Festival and Convention in Chicago, April 13, 14, and 15. Delegates representing many of the four hundred-odd workers’ theatres in this country assembled to discuss the problems of the revolutionary theatre and each others’ work. Despite great handicaps, delegates came from both coasts and from important centers throughout this country and Canada. Many delegates had to hitch-hike through the cold spring weather from as far away as Los Angeles, and many had scarcely enough money for food. Despite a stage that dated back to the last century, and stage flats that were ridiculous in their obsoleteness, performances of sterling and moving competence were presented. The thousand to fifteen hundred spectators who filled the theatre each of the three nights responded with encouraging enthusiasm to the productions presented.

The productions and conferences achieved by the League of Workers Theatres testify once again to the impressive vitality and strength of revolutionary culture. Today the workers’ theatres have definitely become a part of the cultural life of vast masses of workers and farmers and intellectuals. They are the weapons with which workers strike back at wage cuts, at war preparations, and Fascism. Not only are they weapons in the class struggle, but also, they are beginning to develop an art satisfying and educating to vast masses of Negroes and whites. The mobile Theatres of Action have definitely taken their place on the sidewalks, in the school halls, and in the union halls of America. The decisions and plans made at this Festival will enable them to develop soon into the best and most loved dramatic art in America. Even in New York and Chicago, the old stage is practically dead; but masses will turn and are turning to the workers’ theatres in mining camps, in steel mill towns, in farming communities. In the “art” theatres of larger cities (long abandoned by bankrupt ivory-towerists) revolutionary drama, with its intellectual clear-headedness, its eagerness to use the most advanced technique, and its strong mass appeal has appeared.

The subjects of the plays produced at the Chicago Festival are indicative of the universal appeal of the workers’ theatre, its ability to interpret and portray the social reality. It is many-tongued because of our large foreign-born population. It is widely diversified because of its size. It is artistically and technically advanced because it is guided by two of the best sources of theatrical theory and criticism: the magazines, International Theatre, published in English in Moscow, and the New Theatre, published in New York City. The subjects chosen for presentation are those of immediate interest to thousands and thousands of workers and intellectuals aware that mankind has entered into “a new round of revolutions and wars.” Exposure of the N.R.A., the social-Fascists, the A. F. of L., and portrayals of struggles based on actual occurrences, as well as intimate pictures of workers’ lives in the home and in the factory, were some of the subjects of the plays produced in Chicago. That they were appreciated was acknowledged by the wild acclaim of the audiences.

In such a production as In the Hog House, produced by the Chicago Workers’ Laboratory Theatre, which describes a strike action (many of the cast are stockyards workers) and in such a play as Court Witness, produced by the Gary Workers’ Theatre (the play was based on an actual frame-up), we see clearly problems of present reality, and we are indicated the solution to the class problem portrayed. Emotions are readily aroused. These are the sufferings, trials, persecutions, and hates of the men and women with whom we work and walk the streets. It is our life that we see on the stage, and when a Marxist interpretation of events is presented, we leave the theatre filled with hope because we have been shown a path, we have seen examples of success or partial success on the part of our comrades in the struggle for a better world.

The winners of first and second place in the competition were Newsboy by the Workers’ Laboratory Theatre of New York City, and Oh Yeah! by the Ukrainian Workers’ Drama Circle of New York City. Both these plays were described by Mike Gold in THE NEW MASSES several weeks ago. The Gary Workers’ Dramatic Group and the Los Angeles Blue Blouses tied for third place, the former with Court Scene, mentioned above, the latter with an unusually good satire on the N.R.A. called A-Shopping We Will Go. Excellent performances were also given by other groups located in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Moline, Ill. An Unemployed Chorus of Negroes and whites sang revolutionary songs, and a Bulgarian Pioneer group presented charming dances.

Serious faults were apparent in the Festival. Most of these lie in the repertoire. As in the proletarian novel and short story in this country, there is still too much stylization, too much abstract speech, too little variation in themes, and a too quick development of character. These problems were taken up during the conference, and a concerted effort will be made to develop a new corps of dramatists whose political and artistic development will enable them to turn out plays that will satisfy the drama-hungry millions. Another fault of the Festival was the absence of a farmers’ group. All Negro and children’s dramatic groups were missing too.

The second Theatre Festival is an historic occasion in the American revolutionary movement. It consolidates and vitalizes the national organization of the workers’ theatres.

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.

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