Theory and Performance in the Depression Theater

THEORY AND PERFORMANCE IN THE DEPRESSION THEATER STUDENTS OF THE SOCIALLY SIGNIFICANT THEATER of the 1930's like to find depression plays as stimulating today as they appeared to be then, at least to the liberal and leftist intelligentsia. At times this desire to make classics even out of agitprops seems too much like the courtiers' desire to praise the emperor's new clothes. In a recent article , for example, one critic tries to boost the depression theater by outlining the dramatic theory behind it. He concludes that the social drama of the 1930's "was not an accident but an intention," that is, the plays were created as a result of the theoretical criticism of the time.! Dramatic theory is important for the light it throws on the theatrical achievements of any time, and the thirties are no exception . But to claim that dramatic theory played a significantly intentional role in creating the depression theater overstates the case. The broadly varied social plays of the 1930's, reflecting all shades of political protest, were hardly created by the relatively small body of dramatic theory that appeared largely in newspapers and little magazines of the left. Pressed by the political urgency of the 1930's, theorists wrote their essays to encourage the development of political plays. But playwrights did not need a theory of drama to become angry at the social injustices of depression life. Theory had little impact on theatrical practice, nor does it really explain what was happening at a time when social and political protest merged with some very traditional dramatic forms like melodrama and tragedy. The dramatic theories of the 1930's were not as new as the theorists claimed, though there was for a short time a desperate search on the far left for a revolutionary artistic form to contain the revolutionary ideological content. Theorists sought new bottles for the new wine of Leninist revolution, but often settled for old bottles that they pretended were new with the aid of new labels. Most playwrights , however, went on bottling the old wine of social reform in old bottles with old labels. Early in the decade, Leopold Auerbach, "the leading theoretician of the proletarian literary movement of the Soviet Union," set the political tone for theorizing about revolutionary literature. He de1 Douglas McDermott, "Propaganda and Art: Dramatic Theory and the American Depression," Modern Drama, XI (May 1968), 81. 426 1972 THE DEPRESSION THEATER 427 clared that "the duty of every revolutionary writer is to discard the mask of being above class and for all humanity." He added, "Ready for the final struggle and inspired with class hatred, we are doing our duty. Our literature is the literature of the world revolution."2 Echoing Auerbach's political declaration, American theorists including Michael Gold, Joshua Kunitz, and A. B. Magi! signed a statement that appeared in Literature of the World Revolution~ an English -language, Moscow-based journal "devoted to the proletarian and revolutionary literature of all countries" with "special attention devoted to questions of Marxist literary criticism."3 This statement, addressed to all "Revolutionary writers," was hardly critical or theoretical in either tone or substance: Fight with the weapon of the word against the oppressors and the hangmen for the defense of the Soviet Union so that the word of the weapon shall not force you to be silent when the bands of hired murderers rush pell-meIl to lay waste the only home of international revolutionary culture-the USSR. Unite in the International Union of Revolutionary Literature! Form and extend in your own countries the Union of Revolutionary Writers! Hands off the USSR, the Fatherland of revolutionary culture! Long live the Revolutionary Literature of the Toilers of the World!4 In the early thirties, the dramatic form that seemed most suitable for revolutionizing audiences was the agitprop. At the Second International Conference of Revolutionary Writers held in Moscow in 1931, Americans like Gold, Kunitz, and Magil heard Lucien Linard, the Latvian delegate, urge widespread use of the agitprop. Linard felt that it had been politically effective in gaining strength for the Communist Party in Germany.5 The message soon reached New York, and Jack Shapiro, chairman of the...