The actual ‘Culture War’ when the working class had fighters in the field. Workers Theater reports from Canada, The Bay, Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland, Tennessee, Philadelphia, New York City, and St. Louis.

‘Coast to Coast with the Workers’ Theatre’ from Workers Theatre. Vol. 3 No. 7. July-August, 1933.

CANADA

The Workers Theatre of the Progressive Arts Club, Toronto, Canada recently concluded a tour, performing at eight places and receiving a hearty ovation from the workers each time. WORKERS THEATRE expects to receive and publish soon an article (or several) on the development of the workers theatre in Canada.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.

And the Workers Theatre of San Francisco is a group from which you and I and every group in the States can learn from. Although the group exists for comparatively a short time only, it is functioning in full force, performing regularly at various workers centers in S. F. and the Bay Region, selling their quota of “Workers Theatre” regularly and everywhere, and sending out repertory material to all the groups in the Bay Region. The group has done very valuable work for our whole movement by contributing plays of new to the Workers Theatre to our repertory, such as their “Musical Revue” and “Political Circus”. (A review of the performance in this issue). And their plans are to present every month same large, ambitious affair like the “Musical Revue without any trouble” as the comrades of the group themselves write. We need more such groups.

LOS ANGELES

The Rebel Players arranged “An Evening with the Workers Theatre” for July 18 in Los Angeles, after which they expected to present it in other large cities of Southern Calif. The progress included three one-act plays, a mass recitation, and several individual recitations.

In May they had five bookings, in June eight. They also participated under their own banner in the National Youth Day Anti-War Demonstration in San Diego May 30. And they raised their sales of WT to 60 copies of the April issue.

TENNESSEE

Highlander Folk School Dramatics Club. As a required project, one of the students at Highlander Folk School, Monteagle, Tennessee, chose to organize a dramatics club for the purpose of presenting labor plays. The club is made up of the young people of the community. The first play presented was one written by the student and one of the teachers, built around a local situation. Other labor plays were secured from Brookwood Labor College, and “What Price Coal” was presented on the closing night of school, April 1. Although the members of the cast were inexperienced and young for their parts, they did remarkably well. The club hopes to expand, and to start traveling workers theatre sometime.

ST. LOUIS, MO.

Every now and then there comes a bit of good news from St. Louis. A group of young Negro girls has already a creditable performance of Adventures of Telephone Booth to its credit. (a new group, The John Reed Dram Group is still receiving requests for the Scottsboro mass recitation although it is already very popular in St. Louis.) The plans of the Theatre Groupe in St. Louis are: 3 short skits for an I.W.O. picnic. A speaker has already been secured for J.R.C. Open Forum, from the Alridge Players which is the premier Negro Little Theatre in St. Louis. One Open Forum evening of the J.R.C. will be devoted to Workers Theatre Plays. Take example, John Reeders other cities.

CHICAGO

With the production of precedent by the Chicago Workers Theatre the basis of a stationary Workers Theatre was laid. This theatre drew to itself various professional people, technicians, players who up to the time of coming to this theatre had no knowledge of the working-class movement at all. The play coming close to the end of the season has not left time for another production this year. Our membership, (of the Chicago Workers Theatre) not having another production to work on are organizing small groups throughout the city, who, in addition to existing groups, are to be part of the Workers Theatre Council. One significant point about the Workers Theatre is that our director and players who were drawn from the bourgeois theatre have been, as a result of working with us, drawn closer to the movement and are studying theoretical books on the class struggle.

As for the Council as a whole, we have not yet succeeded in drawing together all the language dram groups, but have set about the work vigorously and will soon be able to report that these too are members of the Workers Theatre Council. Several of the language groups are already in the Council, such as the Russian, the Yiddish.

CLEVELAND

[missing] Group of Cleveland performed “Mr. Box, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Nox”, a play written by Will Lee, and published in one of the former issues of “WT,” at the opening affair of the convention of the YCA. According to voices from the audience, the play met with tremendous response, a number of people in the audience stated that it was the only thing on the program that made them wake up and listen. Are there other Workers Theatre Groups that have contact with or work in cooperation with Dram Groups not yet connected with the LOWT. Let’s have reports.

Some real agitprop work was done by two members of the Cl.-section of the LOWT, who went out with the Cleveland Column of the Ohio Relief March to Columbus, Ohio, on June 25th. They introduced the idea of composing and preparing plays day by day on the basis of experiences with police terror and other daily events. The full details of these activities in the Ohio March will appear in the next issue of “Workers Theatre.”

PHILADELPHIA, PA.

The John Reed Dram Group has given the following performances during the last month: For Pen and Hammer Club affair, performance of “John Bull’s Other Island” at an affair for the benefit of National Youth Day, open-air performance in Allentown, Pa. on National Youth Day, and a performance of “United Front” and “I.L.D.” at a Scottsboro-Mooney mass meeting in Atlantic City, N.J. where Mrs. Patterson and Ruby Bates spoke at. At present the group is rehearsing a 45-minute play, “Titans of Paris” by I. Shappin, dealing with the Paris Commune. A course on the History of the Drama is also in progress.

A new Naturefriends Dramatic Group in Phila. is fast developing into a potential factor of the Workers Dramatic Movement. The first play of the group, “Funny As Hell”, given at the Kensington Labor Lyceum met with enthusiastic response from the audience. The second play, a performance of “The Gong Is Striking,” written by a member of the group was presented June 17 at the Naturefriends Camp near Reading, Pa., and will be performed again at the N.Y. Naturefriends Camp, in Midvale, N.J. in September.

NEW YORK CITY

The N.Y. Section of the L.O.W.T. has been completely reorganized. Starting off with a general membership meeting of all the groups, with an attendance of about 100, representing 25 groups, the section has now regularly its Council and Executive meetings. Section Council Meetings where all groups in N.Y. should send a delegate are being held every second Friday of every month. The first work of the new Section Exec. is to register all Dram Groups in N.Y. as members of the L.O.W.T. and to prepare and mobilize the section for the All-Eastern Workers Theatre Conference.

A Negro Workers Theatre has recently been organized under the auspices of the “Harlem Liberator”. It had an initial membership of 15. An original one act play, “Bring your Burdens”, dealing with evictions and the united front of Negro and white workers, was written by a member, Sally Altman, and is now in rehearsal under the direction of E.S. Karnot. The group welcomes members and repertory material dealing with Negro social problems. Though composed mainly of non-professionals at present, professional theatre workers and artists are invited to help establish a real, vital theatre of the struggling Negro People. Address all communications to: Liberator Theatre of Negro Workers, X Harlem Liberator, 21627th Avenue, N.Y.

The Harlem Progressive Youth Club, Dram Circle has developed into a very active and creative group. The group, besides performing for their club regularly, arranged an evening of plays in June, two of them written by members of the group themselves. Keep it up, Harlemites!

The Naturefriends Agitprop Group is very active rallying the German Workers for the fight against German fascism. Their Hitler play somewhat revised, has been performed for various German speaking organizations during the last two months.

The dramatic section of the Progressive Workers Culture Club has recently produced number of new plays. Among these are “Dr. Arupps”, “The Adventures of a Telephone Booth”, “Scottsboro” etc. They all went over fine.

Dramatic Club of the I.W.O. Branch 404, The Boro Park Branch of the International Workers Order, organized a dramatic group during the Autumn of 1931. The original purpose was to provide entertainment for a concert. The two plays were so successful that the group became permanent. It is now a factor in getting new members. Each of our rehearsals is preceded by a thirty minute discussion of a production problem. Recent plays the group has produced are: “Dr. Krupps”, “Oscar Sapp”, “Broadway 1933″. The last has been retained in our repertory. At present the club is rehearsing The Earth Moves”, by Antal Hidas. “Women’s Might” will be the next play to go into production.

The Italian Drama Section of Harlem is organized in such a way to give proletarian plays, to represent on the stage the humiliating life of the workers today, and which way they should understand their economic situation in bourgeois society. We have not yet a modern repertory, but we expect to begin our work soon, translating some good workers Drama from other languages, and to improve our artistic education. We hope to progress because we are inclined to work very hard. We will write about our theatre in one of the next issues of the magazine.

4 Megaphone Brigades have been organized in N.Y. during May and June demonstrations. The main slogans of the respective demonstrations were united into a mass recitation, distributed among the speakers with the strongest voices, rehearsed once or twice, and out on the streets we went. May 1 saw the Workers Laboratory Theatre and the Yorkville Youth Players together as one Brigade. Already on May 30, National Youth Day, each of these groups had its own Brigade of 12, and 16 members respectively. And for the Anti-Fascist Demonstration on June 24, a Brigade was organized consisting of members of the Yorkville Youth Players, Prolet-Buehne, and the German Workers Club, German and English speaking.

Prolet-Buehne is directing and concentrating its entire work on the German speaking organizations now. Its main task is of course the fight against fascism and for the united front. Performances and single recitations have been given during the last 2 months for various German organizations. The group is now writing a play called “Herr Ridder (Editor of Staatsseitung) ruft die Polizei”,  exposing the role of the German Fascist paper “The Staatsseitung.” With the return of two of its members who have been at the International Workers Theatre Olympiad in Moscow, work will make quick progress.

The Yorkville Youth Players, still a small but regularly working group, is ready for street performances of “Scottsboro”. An indoor performance of “Scottsboro” and “Charity” will be given Saturday, July 15th, for an affair of the C.P. unit, and July 29 for the Section Dance of the Y.C.L. at the Checkers Club in Harlem. In rehearsal is “Hitler, the Savior of Whom?,” a play translated from the German. After this, the group will write a play to be performed for the laundry strikers in the section and at open air meetings.

The New Theater 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/v3n7-n8-jul-aug-1933-Workers-Theatre-yale-mf.pdf