The Social Critics on Stage

THE SOCIAL CRITICS ON STAGE IN HIS RECENT BOOK, Drama Was a Weapon, M. Y. Himelstein offers the thesis that the militant leftist drama of thirty years ago has had publicity which far surpasses its actual influence. The assertion is a valid one; nevertheless, a nagging feeling remains that the protest plays provided the most exciting, the most vibrant, the most alive theater of the period between the wars. And this generalization applies to the social protest plays as a group in spite of their uneven quality, their lack of a clear permanent influence, their failure at the box office, and their deficiencies as literature. Drama of social protest has a long and honorable history. The move to social protest drama between 1920 and 1940 follows logically from the plays of Ibsen, Shaw, and Galsworthy. Never before, however , had so many authors written social protest in such a concerted effort; never before the 1930's could a decade be so clearly characterized as a decade of bitter criticism. The angry writers who made up the movement were a different breed from their urbane European predecessors. With red flag waving, they rallied to the cause of workers' theater hopefully extolled by New Theatre magazine which with its ultra serious, self-righteous editorials presents a truthful picture of the protest movement: The increasing importance of the dramatic arts as a stimulus to thought and action is evidenced by the remarkable growth of the revolutionary theatre, film, and dance during the past year. The strength and growing influence of the workers' theatre has alarmed the ruling class of every bourgeois country . . . for the slogan "Art is a weapon of the class struggle," has penetrated the broadest strata of worker-artists the world over. This slogan has been translated into terms of life and blood and death in far off China and in Germany where the revolutionary theatres have agitated against the war lords Chiang Kai Shek and Hitler, where their leaders have been imprisoned, tortured, murdered, and even buried alive. . . . Despite the combined onslaught of that unholy trinity, Capital, State and Church, revolutionary theatre workers the world over will continue the fight against war and fascism, for a social system in which the arts and sciences serve not the Morgans and the Mellons, the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, the Krupps and the Comite des Forges, but the mass of mankind.l. 1 New Theatre, I (September 1934). 3. 277 278 MODERN DRAMA December The message is clear, doctrinaire-and idealistic. The editorial writer (probably Herbert Kline) felt compelled to remind his readers monthly that the movement was making its presence felt. At the very same time, his typical articles always flayed the writers for not doing quite enough: Unfortunately our art, our "weapon," has often been as blunt as our fight has been brave. Frequently we find ourselves lagging behind the high demands of revolutionary art. While worker audiences will tolerate amateurish work for a while, they will not tolerate work of a low level indefinitely. We must analyze the weaknesses of our work now, and begin an intense and immediate drive to remedy them, to raise our art to a new high leve1.2 This double-edged approach-you're doing great, team, but why aren't you doing better?-finally drove many talented playwrights to turn their backs on the left-wing approach. The term social protest drama is clouded over with hazy connotations . Essentially, a social protest play is one which looks at contemporary society through hostile eyes. The range is clearly very wide; this definition would still include in the same tent Ibsen's Enemy of the People and Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Plays like Kingsley's Dead End or Paul Green's Johnny Johnson merely called attention to the problems of society, while the more militant plays went a step beyond and issued calls for action. II To what extent is a dramatist responsible for pointing up the problems of his society? This question forms the basis for an old debate. But in the period between the wars, the debate became more intense and more acrimonious than ever. Playwrights who remained apart from the...