Staging Strikes: Workers’ Theatre and the American Labor Movement

In the thirties, those on the political left, Socialists, Communists, artists and writers, educators, and labor movement activists, shared the belief that leisure activities should reflect and promote the interests of working people. Cultural activities should be used to educate workers in bringing about radical social and political changes and to draw people together around shared interests. Workers’ theater became a successful vehicle for political education and for involving the audience in the labor movement. Such plays as \u0022Let Freedom Ring\u0022 and \u0022Waiting for Lefty\u0022 depicted experiences that paralleled the audiences’ own, that entertained and absorbed them, and that showed them the personal, social, economic, and political changes that could be achieved through the struggles of the labor movement. In clear and moving prose, Hyman traces the history of workers’ theater from its grassroots origins to the Federal Theater Project of the WPA under Roosevelt and into unions’ recreational programs. Even today, the tradition of workers’ theater endures in local and regional productions that reflect current worker concerns or revive significant workers’ plays of the Depression period. Hyman shows that the significance of workers’ theater lies not only in the plays produced but also in the audiences’ experience, in coming together out of common concerns to achieve a solidarity that emphasizes the effectiveness of collective action.