Introduction

AGIT-PROP IS A MILITANT FORM of art intended to emotionally and ideologically mobilize its audience to take particular action vis-a-vis an urgent social situation. As other commentators have also noted (Stourac and McCreery 1986; Kershaw 1992), the aesthetic elements of agit-prop performance reflect the public streets and squares for which the form was designed: portable sets, visually clear characterizations, emblematic costumes and props, choral speaking, traditional music and character types familiar to the broad range of spectators that may congregate, and ideological resonance with the public spaces/ buildings where they are presented.