The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 2, 1927, Page 8

For a Workers’ Theatre “Why necessarily a workers’ theatre? better theatre for all?” The question has been raised wherever the theatre came up for discussion in so-called radical intel- lectual circles. The theatre as it exists is such a mockery at life’s truth, art and human intelligence, that to demand the creation of a special class theatre seems an uncalled for and therefore damaging divi- sion of forces. An adequate answer to this super- ficially convincing objection would involve ‘an analy- sis of the class-psychology expressing the class posi- tion in society of the various factors to the process of wealth creation. While this may be a thankful task in itself—since the work of drawing the line of demarkation between the social classes in the realm of self-expression has hardly begun in the United States—the approach to the theatre question may be purely practical. The workingman does not go to the existing theatre. The most advanced and class-conscious workers who, in their cultural hun- ger, sometimes invade the private commercial theatre, are thoroughly disgusted with its fare, but then they are a very small fraction of the working class. The mass of workers goes to cheap vaude- ville houses or to the cinema, but they are dead to the call of the “legitimate stage!” The question reduces itself to this: Is it possible to create in a large industrial center a _ theatre which, while gratifying the thinking elements of the mill and shop, would irresistibly draw the rank and file of the working class, thus opening before them a world of new experiences ? We answer the question in the affirmative (“we” enibraces here a group of educators doing cultural work among the masses). We proceed from the assumption that while the advanced workers despise the existing theatre for its commercialism, its mawk- ish pseudo-realism, its standardization, as well as for the lack of a content bearing significance for the working class spectator, the bulk of the workers disregard the theatre because they do not find in it anything of interest for themselves. To educate the working masses in the enjoyment of theatrical art is to give them a theatre in which they will find things attractive, absorbing, stirring, vital from their standpoint. It is too easy to rest on the lazy assertion that the working masses have not yet grown to respond to theatrical art. As a matter of fact, there isn’t a mass in the world that is incapable of enjoy- ing theatrical art. The enjoyment of the theatre is widespread and primitive. The basic demand for it is universal. This demand is at present being satisfied by substitutes either, poisondus or silly. We propose that a theatre be created which, apply- ing art means, would find a way to the inmost soul of the working masses. Why not a We do not blame the average werker for not heeding the theatres that exist. Of course, we are fully aware of the existence of “good” plays: those of Shakespeare for instance, once in a while, or those of Shaw, or some other “highbrow” author. But aside from the fact that a man of the masses cannot thrive long on such “heavy” menu (can we?) one must not forget that such performances are only oases in the midst of a vast theatrical desert all full of the sands of little incidents in the life of the propertied classes, presented in a polished conventionalized fashion for the after- dinner entertainment of the same propertied class- es, or strewn with the bones of “high” tragedy mostly of an unreal and therefore unconvincing na- ture. Why should the structural iron workers be interested in the fact that a society lady is crav- ing for a male friend to drink tea with while her husband is in his business office? Why should the bricklayer shed tears over the fate of a great bootlegger and master burglar losing both his for- tune and the aristocratic girl he loves? What share can my neighbor, Jack the locksmith, have in the plight of the duchess who is wearing a paste diadem while her genuine jewels are in the pawn- shop? What have my friends, the cloak, suit and skirtmakers, to do with this idle, empty, sated and unimaginative world of tailored gentlemen and per- fumed ladies whose lives pass in peanut emotions and flat pleasures. Now, my neighbor Jack is by no means stupid. He is an alert fellow of about thirty-cight. He is a union member of long standing and loves to tell about strikes of former years. He has an instine- tive dislike for the “boss,” the “trust” and the “politician,” though you would not class him among the conscious workers. He is of a rather mocking bent of mind, and when one of the female middle- class inhabitants of the neighborhood passes by his shop window, he puckers his face into a malicious grimace. He is not a reader of books or papers, but he loves to talk to his shop mates, and is of a highly companionable nature. He is keen on “stories,” “yarns,” adventure, and this is what draws him to the “movies,” which he has sense enough to consider of no importance. Can we not draw this Jack and a hundred thousand other Jacks.and Maries and Sadies, more or less advanced, into a theatre which would both hold their attention and elevate _ them to a higher-plane of mental life? All depends upon what the theatre would offer: 1,.—The first prerequisite is a theatre pulsating with the realities of life surrounding the worker, »a theatre bold enough to look America in the face. It is characteristic of bourgeois art to shun eruel and crude realities, to gloss over conflicts. The The Baseball Business Baseball is logically the Great American Game. There’s good money in it. Who'll win the pennant . this year? The owners of the leading clubs in the American and Na- tional Leagues. The pro- fit will be handsome. The attendance at the ball parks during the year will increase with a win- ning team. The World Series is a little gold mine. Last. year’s seven games had an attendance. of 328,051 fans who paid a total admission of $1,207,864. That’s money. Baseball is no small coek-roach business! EING a business, professional baseball is run by “business ethics.” This doe not mean that pro baseball is necessarily crooked. It does get badly bent. In fact, gambling and general dis- honesty have been part of baseball since its birth. From 1843, when the Washington Club of New York first organized a baseball team, until 1867, the game rapidly gained.in popularity. But at the same time its bad features were already evident. One authority tells us: “In spite of its popularity the game acquired certain undesirable adjuncts. The betting and pool-selling evils became prominent and before long the game was in thoro disrepute. It was not only generally believed that matches were not’ played on their merits, but it was known the players themselves were not above selling contests. At that time many of the journals of the day fore- told the speedy downfall of the sport.” That was over 60 years ago. Today we have big- ger and better gamblers. The scandal of a few months ago and the scandal of the “Black Sox” of 1919, got more attention from the average worker than the scandal of Nicaragua or the scandal of American interference in China. TS National League was organized in 1876. In 900 the American League was born. Today hun- dreds of professional and semi-pro organizations dot the country. Baseball is a flourishing business paying generous dividends. Recently the owners of the franchise of the New York Club refused an offer of 5 million for their interest. Babe Ruth (who lends his name to prison-made goods despite the protests of organized labor) is paid a salary of $210,000 for three years—greater than that re- ceived by the president of the United States. Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, each will draw over $50,000 for this season in which they will likely play less than a hundred games. Being a big business now, baseball is put on a big business basis. Labor-hating Judge Landis is guiding its destiny. The ball parks are scab built and scab operated. Judge Landis, whose salary has just been raised to $65,- 000 a year, will see that they continue that way. Rowdyism on the playing field is being ruled out— it’s bad business. The newspapers speak of the higher plane on which the game is run today. This year 75 college men are in the big leagues. As a mark of its higher intellectual plane (and higher admission prices) the newspapers tell us of a roughneck who quit a team, because, unlike in the old days, he could not borrow a chew of tobacco from any of his team- mates! Baseball has become a high-priced, high- ’ paying, high-toned business indeed. It is skillfully advertised. It is cleverly kept before the public and is now as securely established a commercial product as a Ford or Wrigley’s chewing gum. ASEBALL is rightly called the National Game. It is thoroughly woven into American life, The American youth plays it on the streets and in the schools. The boy who doesn’t know who discovered America can tell you who led the American League. The man in the shop who does not know the name of the president, knows the names of all the lead- ing major league ball players; High schools with — 4am By MOISSAYE OLGIN theatre as it exists is therefore worlds apart from the robust: colorful countenance of life. The theatre is the shadow of a ghost either of emotion or ad- venture. A workers’ theatre must throb with the full and deep heart-beat of the world we live in, the country we arg building, the historic epoch we are traversing. . Lazy objection will say: “Ah, you want a the- atre of propaganda.” We will reply with Lunachar- sky: “God save us from a play which is a strike bulletin in five acts.” We do not want a theatre which makes direct propaganda for this or that “cause.” We do want a theatre that will make the worker a broader and more humane man and there- by enable him to be a better member of his class. We do not want propaganda, but we do not want shutting out everything that is not “love” or “sex appeal” among the bourgeoisie or its intellectual adjunct. We want to see a world which also in- cludes the working masses, a world in which Gary, Ind., Lawrence, Mass., and Passaic, N. J., will take their legitimate place. We want a theatre that will diseover America, its present big industrial heart, its rural toilers all over the land, its grandiose past (Westward! discovering and conquering a con- tinent:) back to its origins in a dramatic, revolu- tionary mass upheaval. We wish America por- trayed in a new theatre—America, beautiful and hideous, sweating and seeing visions, mean and ~ full of enormous spiritual possibilities—and we want the toiler to occupy in that America the place that is his in the scheme of things. 2.—A second prerequisite is to preesnt all this in a manner that will be comprehensible to the masses. The bourgeois theatre does not know sim- plicity. The bourgeois theatre is making up “in elaborate phraseology what it misses in contents. The workers’ theatre must proceed from the as- sumption that there is nothing in the life of hu- man beings that cannot be made accessible to the masses. We do not propose to sacrifice art to popularity. We propose to return.art to the dig- nity of simplicity and truth. By giving to the masses such pieces as dwell upon things close to the heart of the masses, and by remaining truly artistic, i. e., finding a form adequate to the ma- terial, we can attract hundreds of thousands, nay, millions, who at present feed on atrocious trash. The question of the playwright for this new kind of drama presents the least difficulty, inasmuch as the theatre actually molds the dramatist, and the economic law of supply and demand is particularly applicable to the theatre realm, where there is an overproduction of playwrights. Given an actual de- mand, the new play will soon make its appearance. (Continued next week) By WALT CARMON good baseball teams attract pupils. that graduate successful major league ball players are regarded as real seats of learning. Patriotic exercises at ball games on numerous oc- easions make baseball mighty good for the govern- ment and the politicians. So well has it worked in America, that in the imperialist invasion of our neighbors, the baseball bat has followed the bayonet and the bible. In the Philippines, Panama, Mexico and Cuba, baseball is supplanting bull-fighting. Cubans have become so proficient at the game, a number of leading major leaguers are from Cuba. The centuries-wise old church alse knows the value of baseball. Church leagues are a feature of baseball interest in all cities. If organized labor has overlooked baseball, the boss has not. Every factory, where welfare fares well in lowering wages, has its ball club. A spirit is built up to support “our boys.” A “family spirit” that breeds loyalty to the boss is bred thru the workers’ interest in the sport. Wage slaves turn out in thousands (on their own time) on Sat- urday afternoons and Sundays to cheer for “our team.” “Our team” helps us to forget our wages and our hours. Every city has its industrial leagues. Professional and semi-pro players are put on soft jobs so they can add to the glory of. the company club. Baseball is good for the boss. It’s high time for organized labor to make base- ball good for the workers. After all, it’s a great game. Thousands play it, read about it and speak. of it daily. Interest in the game, participation in the sport, these can be used to stimulate interest in the problems of labor. Labor leagues can be organized among workers’ sports clubs. Control of the bosses’ teams can be secured to ally them with workers’ sports organizations. The interest of workers can be secured to support their own sports to the benefit of labor. Until now baseball has been the monopoly of the enemies of labor. The recent organization of a Workers’ National Sports Alliance, involving thousands of workers, is a good first step to break this anti-labor sports monopoly. It is worthy of labor's support. As to professional baseball—who will win the pennant this year? Ask me another. The answer is——-baseball business. ; The colleges °c aNd ete