The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 9, 1927, Page 8

For a Workers’ Theatre (Continued from last week) 8.—By no means do we wish a gloomy theatre, or a solemn theatre, or a morbid theatre, or a high- falutin theatre. What we wish is a theatre where the typically bourgeois subject of individual, mainly sexual, “love” sufferings, conflicts and problems is relegated to the rear, if not entirely abandoned, while the wider aspects of life—social, economic, political, cultural—including the emotions of men ‘and women, not svyar-coated but real and convinc- ing in their truth--occupy the front. We do not wish a theatre that preaches. We detest moralizing pieces. But similarly we detest empty, senseless pieces, anecdotes in three acts with lingerie and interior decoration. We wish to see things that are full of significance, strong, vital, vibrant, stirring, not only showing the tragic face of life, but also ready to laugh, to mock, to ridicule, to construe a grotesque image, to grip the soul with a sun-lit vision. We wish a theatre that lives a full-chested life instead of talking polite words in a drawing room or in a country club. We wish to see both suffering and joy, injustice and struggle, sweeping passions and life-giving ideas, wisdom and mirth, blackness and rainbow-spanned horizons, childish- ness and manhood, love and sacrifice, victors and vanquished—all this not in the abstract, but in- earnated in people, appesring in the actions of liv- ing men and women. 4.—It is obvious that a theatre of this kind will depert in its methods from the purely “speaking” theatre with painted sccnery. It will certainly be a construct'vist theatre, cmploying all elements that go into the formation of theatrical art: drama, music, plastic motion, sculpture, painting, lighting. While it is impossible and hardly desirable to lay down a rule as to what kind of production we would like to see in the workers’ theatre, it is safe to Say, negatively, that such theatre will not imitate life, mimic or photograph life, that it will not con- fine itself to pretty sterilities or cut and dried po- ‘lite mannerisms—-postively, that it will be a cre- ative theatre constructing for each piece its own forms of expression, searching for new means, evcr .gvoping, never resting on its laurels (the pre-Re- “yolutionary Moscow Art Theatre was of this kind, ‘though serving the needs of the Russian bourgeois intelligentzia under Tzardom). The workers’ theatre must be an embodiment of the modern forms of production enlivened and in- vigorated by fresh storm-swept material taken from the very heart of the present cataclysmic era. It needs not much proving that a theatre showing the sky-seraper and the blast furnace, the labora- tory and the picket line, the naval monster and the grain elevator, the plantation Negro and the )Kentuckian mountaineer, the railroad strike and |the war of lethal gasses, will not be able to confine itself to the methods of production of “The Great Gatsby,” “Bride of the Lamb,“ Cratg’s Wife,”. or ‘even “Desire Under the Elms” or “The Great God | Brown.” It must, however, be made a conscious ‘task—to work collectively for new forms and new methods of presentation. 5.—This brings up the question of a staff. We picture the workers’ theatre as consisting of a co- terie of actors, painters, sculptors, dancers, play- wrights, musicians, lighting masters, all having contact with the masses, at least sympathetic to labor's struggle, some of them hailing from the yanks of labor, all of them wvrking in cooperation for the creation of significant beauty, all animated with the striving for the higher art which is of necessity more human and .more true than the commercial mummery or even the better “little the- atre,” which, after all, is a child of the more en- lightened and artistically sensitive bourgeoisie. It is to be assumed thai the formation of such a group of theatrical conspirators against the existing order will be a dialectical process. Obviously, it will in- clude a majority of younger men and women. Pos- sibly, many an artist will only begin his eareer in the workers’ theatre. Undoubtedly, the theatre will draw its main vital power from the solid mass of workers, What we wish to see is a theatre where the reverse of politeness is the rule. In a theatre with- out polite plays, where this very politeness of the “better society” is perhaps held up to ridicule, one _ cannot expect the participants to be moving and conversing like the drawing room mannikins we see in the bourgeois theatre. We picture a theatre full of action, motion, broad gestures, high intonations, clashes of light, reverberations of sounds, colorful groupings, words enhanced by music, music deep- ened by stirring light effects, light made a part of the whole performance. We wish to see a theatre where not only the truth is released through real artistic construction, but where the actor—in the broader sense of the word—is released to greater freedom of expression. 5.—This theatre will have meaning. only when it removes the barrier between the stage and the - audience. Many an attempt was made to achieve. this (Reinhardt placing the stage in the center of and on a lower level than the audience, Meyerhold making some of the actors stand up iu the middle of the audience and delivering a speech as if they were .part of it, American producers sending out their performers into the aisles, ete.) but all these were mechanical means. To remove the barrier between stage and spectators means to create such an intimate understanding and community om emo- tion between performers and audience that the lat- ter cease to be mere spectators. It must be admit- ted that the present writer never saw in the legi- timate American theatre that abandon on the part of the spectators, that restless absorption in the proceedings on the stage, that hanging on every word of the players that he often found in drama- tic clubs performing “for their own people.” A workers’ theatre must be a band (gang?) of men and women known to the working masses as “our own” and performing in such a spirit of mutual understanding between themselves and -the work- ers as would render the theatre onc emotinal whole. Such closeness cannot be created artificially. It must be the outcome of the workers having re- cognized the players as part of their lives and hav- ing taken them to their bosom. While this mutual understanding must come not only from the mak- ing of art but from gaining recognition in ways other than art creations, it will enhance the pure art enjoyment of the audience immensely. 6.—-The theatre, groping for ever new ways, must necessarily be combined with one or several theatre studios where new players are being attracted to the work and new methods are being tested. We picture the studios as a connecting link between the theatre and the working masses, or rather as rami- fications of the theatre reaching out into the masses. We picture hundreds of young working men and working women passing through these studios, ac- quiring the technique of theatrical self-expression, forming, as it were, the theatrical vanguard of the working masses (theoretically that vanguard can be increased to embrace a very large section of the class-conscious elements of the workers) spread- By MOISSAYE OLGIN ing among them theatrical culture. From another angle the same vanguard may be looked upon as theitrical reseryes to be drawn for the performance of mass plays which must be one of the main fea- tures of a workers’ theatre, and for expanding the theatre in times of need. The bourgeois theatre is being utilized for im- perialist and chauvinist ends (war propaganda, Red Cross drives, etc.), the workers’ theatre must be an instrument of the workers in that it actively par- ticipates in their class struggle. We imagine a de- tachment of the New York Workers’ Theatre going out to Passaic to perform, in a hall or in the open air, for the textile strikers—not only to raise funds, but, mainly, to hearten the strikers and their chil- dren. We imagine a devil-may-care troop of young theatrical’ “frontiersmen” rushing out of Chicago to Herrin, Ill., and to other coal-mining towns to form the great theatrical event of the coal strike. We imagine workers’ theatre artists decorating la- bor’s convention halls and giving performances~ for the delegates. That such performances cannot, by the nature of things, be polite, that they must as- sume a sarcastic, anti-capitalist nature, will by no means lessen the value of the theatre in the eyes of the working class. We are against propaganda as marie. *he artistic quality of a vital performance. But “ weleome propaganda, i. e., directing thoughts and emotions in a definite channel, once it comes as a result of an artistic performance. By so partici- pating in the everyday life™of the workers, the workers’ theatre will gain that, intimate connection with the workers which will make them rush to every new performance and watch the players with enthusiasm and adoration—provided the perform- ances in themselves are worth seeing. Pageants and performances for workmen’s chil- dren must be a _part of the program of a workers’ theatre. 7.—The theatre must be a public undertaking financed either by labor unions or by the sale of shares among the workers (details of organization need not be here entered into) and making no pro- fit. Its staff must consist of a nucleus of profes- sionals with a large auxiliary force of theatrically skilled and semi-skilled workers. It must be a re- pertory theatre with no stars. It must be a pre- dominantly American theatre, admitting, however, exceptionally good foreign plays. Is this a dream? It depends on the initiative of a few. There is an enormous potential audience; there are many intellectuals, who, being friendly to labor and disgusted with the bourgeois theatre, are aching to put their energy to the creation of something new and useful both for art and the workers. There are young actors and other artists ready to attempt the experience of collective work for a collective art. There are tokens in the air pointing the way: workers’ art clubs, singing so- cieties, dramatic circles, etc, mostly among foreign- born workers,. who, of late, however, have grown to know English and will certainly welcome a workers’ theatre in English. There must be a crystallizing point to set the movement afoot. The aim of this article is to point out this need, and, perhaps, hasten the for- mation of such a point. * * “Are ‘you ea proletarian art?” we hear disquieted questions, Our answer is: Let names alone. Let us do the thing. When it will have ma- terialized and gone part of its road of develop- ment, we will have time enough to discuss where to class it. (The end.) Correcting the American Mercury HE “American Mercury” costs fifty cents in America and a cent or two more in Europe. This means that its price is equivalent to the price of a dinner, where I am living now. My wages are those of the European working class. That is one reason why I do not buy the “American Mercury.” That is why, if I ever do see it, it is because of the good graces of Some affluent Amer- iean friend who can afford it. This will explain why these lines arrive so be- latedly. Because I am writing about an article, by Harbor Allen, entitled, “The Flynn,” which ap- peared in the “American Mercury” of December last. It’s not my fault I’m so late. The article is, on the whole, a good article, ‘ib though a bit too superficial. But, then, if it were not, it probably wouldn’t have got into the Amer- ican Mercury. Comrade Allen manages to inject the frivolous-cynical quality, here and there, which is the rather monotonously ehypeveting tone of the publication. And, there is no reason ra the world why an | article “shouldn’t be written about Gurley Flynn. She | is certainly good material, besides being an inter- . esting and lovable individual. She is, I am glad to say, a friend of mine. I liked what Allen said about her. | But—there is such a thing as facts, af'er all. And, ‘I fear Allen, in writing his article, went no By CHARLES ASHLEIGH further than borrowing Elizabeth’s scrap-book of newspaper clippings for a few days. And, some of his statements are inexcusable, in a writer who, presumably, takes the working class movement seriously, and writes sometimes for a Communist. newspaper. Before we come to the things which specially en- raged me, let us take, as symptomatic, a smaller instance or two In speaking of the famous Lawrence textile strike, of 1912, Allen says: “Strikes in those days were nothing like the somewhat polite affairs they have since, with one or two exceptions, come to be. Neither side asked or gave any quarter.” Now, I have been a long time away from the United States; however, as a humble, deportee, | keep my weather-eye intermittently on affairs there. I have not observed that the spirit of broth- erly love: now pervades American strikes. The Passaic strike, the beating up of girl pickets in New York, and similar occurrences, do not—at this long distance—-savour over much of politeness. When did the politeness start Not as late as 1919, with the steel strike, surely? And if tomorrow, the miners in West Virginia, or the Nesaba Iron Range miners, were to strike, is Allen able to guar- antee that the bosses would ‘orm strictly to the rules of courtesy? : But, when Allen says “Neither side asked or gave any quarter,” he seems to intimate that, in the a Lawrence strike, there was-violence on the part of the workers. Here, he is hopelessly wrongs Never was there a strike, on so large a scale, so peace- fully. conducted. Let him ask Giovannitti or Gur- ley Flynn. If that is so, what does he mean? Later, still on the Lawrence strike, he says, “Gur- ley Flynn, who assumed command with Big Bill Haywood * * *” Incredible as it will seem to all old rebels, he does not mention Giovannitti or Ettor, who, together with Caruso, were on trial for murder; and who were just as prominent, as lead- ers, as Gurley Flynn and Big Bill Haywood. To describe the Lawrence strike and omit the Ettor- Giovannitti case, is like cooking ham and cggs without the ham. Allen, in fact, altogether ignores the splendid machinery of the Lawrence strike—the Strike Com- mittee of fifty-odd members, with its language rep- resentation, and so on. Again, in speaking of the Paterson silk strike, he gives the impression that, alune and unaided, Gurley led the whole business. Now, I am certain that, when she read this, Eliza- beth felt damned uncomfortable, and rather like cursing this young man who, for the sake of econ- .verting harsh fact into specious newspaper-rom- ance, swept grandly aside all the other leaders who played prominent parts in the Paterson strike. Mind you, I wasn’t in the Lawrence or Paterson (Continued on page 5)