Competition from ‘serious’ theater and the cultural garbage the capitalists mass-produce are just two of the many issues facing radical and working class playhouses. Margaret Larkin on how to bring workers into the theater and engage them to return.

‘Building An Audience for Workers’ Theatre’ by Margaret Larkin from New Theatre. Vol. 1 No. 9. October, 1934.

THE stationary workers theatre, operating on a professional scale, is confronted with two major problems, the finding of suitable scripts, and the organization of a reasonably stable audience. The first question depends upon the second more than is generally recognized. The audience dictates what the playwright shall say on the stage much more clearly than readers dictate what novelists shall write, or listeners influence what musicians shall compose. A playwright does not aim his play at a vacuum; he writes it for a specific audience. Until the Theatre Union organized an audience of New York workers, playwrights who wanted to deal with social subjects had a practical choice; they had to compromise or palliate for the sake of the Broadway box office, or keep their plays in a trunk. Undoubtedly the most important contribution of the Theatre Union has been to point the way by which a workers theatre can support itself and insure a wide audience for revolutionary plays.

In organizing a stationary workers’ theatre, it is supremely important to recognize the necessity of appealing to the masses, organized and unorganized. A theatre which appeals only to workers already class conscious and militant, and engaged in organized struggle, limits its usefulness. A workers theatre should serve as a means of drawing unorganized workers into militant struggle. The Theatre Union has consistently followed a united front and non-sectarian policy. There are people of differing political affiliations on its Advisory Board, its Executive Board, its business staff, and in its audience. Organized labor has used the Theatre Union plays as a means of bringing unorganized workers into unions–scores of workers joined the water front unions after seeing Stevedore, for instance. Such a theatre also draws in intellectuals and professional people interested in labor’s struggles, middle class liberals, and general theatre goers.

In building its audience, the Theatre Union uses two methods, both adapted from Broadway’s promotion methods, filling needs of a workers theatre. They are the benefit theatre party, and the individual subscription. Discounts amounting to about forty per cent are offered to organizations that buy blocks of seats and pay for them in advance. The Theatre Union offers a larger percentage, makes easier terms for payments, and offers a lower price scale than the Broadway theatres. Although benefit theatre parties were arranged by many womens clubs, schools, drama societies, and other groups of regular theatre patrons, the Theatre Union has concentrated on bringing workers groups to the theatre. Before the production of Peace on Earth an energetic campaign was carried on among unions, workers’ clubs, and other mass organizations, both “right” and “left”, to acquaint them with the play, and with the plans for the Theatre Union representatives thrashed out the question of a workers’ theatre with members and officials of labor organizations in many personal interviews. Probably no subsequent workers’ theatre in America will encounter quite so much scepticism as the Theatre Union had to overcome. The workers, who deserve the best, always have been given the worst in theatrical entertainment, and this was reflected in their distrust of a project which claimed to be revolutionary in spirit and professional in technique. Before Peace on Earth opened, ten theatre parties had been arranged through the first two weeks, not enough to cover even one third of the running expenses. At the early performances hundreds of representatives of labor organizations were invited to see it on the stage. The result was a flood of benefit theatre parties during the sixteen weeks run. When Stevedore was in preparation only one reading was necessary. Forty-four benefits had been arranged before the play opened, guaranteeing two-thirds of the running expenses anteeing two-thirds of the running expenses for a period of six weeks.

The benefit system was supplemented by a vigorous promotion campaign in unions and other workers’ organizations. The details included a wide distribution of posters and leaflets; sending announcements of the new theatre and its plays to chairmen of meetings; sending volunteer speakers who were prepared to ask for the floor and talk five minutes about the play; furnishing lecturers to cultural groups; enlisting the help of groups that had attended the play, in making contacts with other groups; circularizing labor groups; appealing in the theatre program and from the stage for support for the project; furnishing a picture postcard to members of the audience who wished to inform their friends of the play (as many as 300 a day were mailed by the Theatre Union); collecting and publicizing the opinions of eminent theatrical and literary people, as well as the endorsements of working class leaders. Once the play had been seen, the Theatre Union had enthusiastic cooperation in its promotion campaign from widely varying sources. varying sources. Many organizations distributed or mailed out leaflets to their members, gave time to the speakers, asked for speakers, arranged discussions and symposiums on the play, etc. About fifty volunteers who had been gathered around the Theatre Union during its organization period, helped in carrying out the promotion work.

Although a workers’ theatre cannot base its audience on a subscription system, such as guarantees a run for Theatre Guild plays, it is proper to enlist individual members. “Sympathetic” professional people, intellectuals, and middle class elements generally welcome the chance to subscribe for a season’s plays. A cautious beginning is desirable in setting up a subscription system. The new theatre must be financially able to guarantee the productions for which it sells seats in advance. Furthermore, the cost of running the campaign will be smaller in proportion to the results if the theatre waits until one or two productions have established it with some prestige as a permanent organization.

The Theatre Union instituted its subscription plan after it became apparent that Peace on Earth would run and a second production could be guaranteed. Although it expects to produce three plays next year, its subscription is for two plays–$5 for a pair, of $1.50 seats for each of two plays; $3.50 for a pair of $1 seats for two plays, and $1 for a 20 per cent reduction on seats. Other membership privileges include free or reduced seats for Theatre Union symposiums, and other activities. A brief campaign of about two months during the early summer produced 1,400 members; this number will be doubled or tripled by an energetic campaign in the fall.

Building a stable audience is a main task in organizing for a workers theatre. Financing, the finding of scripts, the problem of gathering together actors and theatrical technicians in a permanent company, the whole question of relations backstage, the particular problems of a united front applied in the theatre, the adapting of bourgeois publicity methods to the needs of a workers theatre (which will be discussed in detail next month), are unique problems. The commercial theatre does not offer any rule of thumb by which to solve them. The workers’ cultural movement is almost devoid of precedents. But the times are in our favor. In the leftward swing, writers, directors, actors, technicians, and people with money to contribute to a workers theatre, can be found. About 300,000 people have seen the Theatre’s Union’s first two plays–audiences certainly can be found and audiences are the basis of the theatre. Professional groups can be formed and will grow in Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, etc., right across the country. Broadway managers already see a “trend” toward “social” plays the workers’ groups must turn it into a real, and vital movement for our own theatre, an instrument hitherto neglected, to help in the building of a better world.

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/v1n09-oct-1934-New-Theatre.pdf