ABSTRACT
First National Workers Theatre Conference (1932) The political, economic and cultural background 1 The first National Workers Theatre Conference takes place in a period of the most severe economic crisis that American capitalism has ever undergone. Thirteen million American workers are unemployed. Millions of small farmers are ruined. Production in every industry, except the war industry, is being sharply curtailed, in the face of the tremendous needs and growing misery of the workers and farmers. At the same time, American imperialism works imperialist powers to prepare an immediate war against the only country where the workers and farmers rule, the only country that steadily raises the economic and cultural level of its toilers - the Soviet Union!2 In the present period, the bourgeois theatre (like all bourgeois culture) is also experiencing the sharpest crisis it has ever known. More than half of its actors, artists, and musicians are admitted to be unemployed. Wages of those still employed are being slashed. The bourgeois cinema has great mass influence, but the bourgeois theatre in the United States has never reached the great masses, except to a limited extent in a few big cities. And now all but a few theatres are unoccupied. Soup kitchens and the proceeds of charity concerts are all our American bourgeois society has to offer those theatre workers and artists who serve it. At the same time, the leaders of the Actors’ Equity Association, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, have not raised a finger to resist the worsening of the conditions of its members, but have gone ahead and increased the initiation fee and annual dues. The Little Theatre Movement, which under the false banner of ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ set out to reform and rescue the bourgeois theatre, has collapsed under the strain of the economic and ideological crisis of capitalism.3 At the same time, the reformist Socialist Party leadership suddenly sets up a so-called ‘Workers Theatre’ demagogically
repeating the revolutionary slogan of ‘Art is a Weapon* and even speaking of ‘Class War*. But its true nature came out in its very first production, which ends up with old unemployed workers finding their only way out by turning on the gas and committing suicide. As a further demagogic trick with the approach of the first National Workers Theatre Spartakiade and Conference, the ‘socialist’ fakers announce, on one day’s notice in the bourgeois press, a ‘First Workers Theatre Conference’ to discuss forming a national organization. That this so-called conference was a demagogic stage trick is shown by the fact they had a total attendance of nine people, of whom some were paid functionaries of the Socialist Party Rand* School.This activity of the cultural fakers is a frantic attempt to counteract the rising influence of the revolutionary Workers Theatre.4 The growth of the revolutionary Workers Theatre in America is an accompaniment of the intensifying crisis of capitalism, which results on the one hand in a rising wave of revolutionary struggle on all fronts by the workers and farmers, and on the other hand in the increasing radicalization of petty-bourgeois theatre workers, artists, and students.5 The rise of the revolutionary Workers Theatre, whose high spot in this country is marked by the present National Spartakiade and Conference, is an international phenomenon. Its increasing effectiveness as a weapon of the working class is shown by the attempts of the bourgeoisie and their ‘socialist’ henchmen to suppress the Agit-Prop theatre troupes in Germany, Japan, Czechoslovakia and other lands, attempts which will also be made soon in the United States. In fact, the police in Los Angeles, California, already seek to smash up all performances by the Rebel Players, a revolutionary Workers Theatre in that city.6 The tremendous growth of the revolutionary Workers Theatre in the United States dates back a year and a half ago to the letter of the International Workers’ Dramatic Union to the Cultural Department of the Workers’ International Relief, to the establishment of the Workers Theatre magazine by the Workers’ Laboratory Theatre of the Workers’ International Relief in April 1931, and its rapid growth of influence under the joint editorship * Possibly a reference to a conservative faction within the American Socialist Party who took their name from the philosopher Rand. (S.C.]
of the Workers’ Laboratory Theatre of the WIR and the Prolet Buehne, German Agit-Prop Troupe of New York. Agit-Prop Theatre and stationary theatre 7 With the development of the Workers Theatre Movement, there is taking place a sharp turn towards Agit-Prop work. Workers Theatres in all languages in the United States are coming to realize more and more that this form of theatre, with its forcefulness, mobility, and political timeliness, is the basic form of Workers Theatre in the present stage of the class struggle. But we must be careful to see that our Agit-Prop plays have good entertainment value.8 At the same time, there is a growing understanding of the proper role of the stationary Workers Theatre, which should be as highly political in content as the Agit-Prop type, but which has possibilities for more thorough and more impressive treatment of the most important subjects. Basic tasks9 The basic tasks of the Workers Theatre now are to spread the idea of the class struggle, to participate actively in the class struggle by raising funds for campaigns and for the revolutionary press, and by recruiting workers into the revolutionary unions and mass organizations, and especially to arouse the workers for the defense of the Soviet Union, against the coming Imperialist attack. Shortcomings10 The main shortcomings of the Workers Theatre in America today are-that there are not enough contacts between groups.- that there are not enough plays being written to meet the growing need.- that the more developed groups outside New York City do not assist the weaker groups in their locality.- that the groups underestimate the necessity for co-operation.- that there is no systematic attempt to build theatre groups in the revolutionary unions and in most of the mass organizations.- that international contacts are very weak.
