Resumen de Immigrants and Social Theatre in the United States
In the early 1930s, the German-speaking Proletbuehne introduced agitprop to the theater in the United States. At the time, agitprop companies were being staged in Europe, particularly in the Soviet Union, Germany, and Czechoslovakia. A troupe of German speaking immigrants, Proletbuehne, set a standard for American agitprop groups in the early 1930s. Agitprop was an offshoot of European expressionism which, in the 1920s, had had a significant influence on the American theater. The Federal Theatre's living newspapers, elaborate agitprops, were immensely popular social productions. They were staged by immigrants in various languages across the United States. The first living newspaper staged by the Federal Theatre's New York City division was Ethiopia, with a cast that included a large group of African singers who had been left stranded in the US after Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. The well-known American playwright Elmer Rice, whose expressionistic play The Adding Machine was popular among American university groups and experimental theater troupes in the 1920s, was responsible for the production. Additionally, the playwright Clifford Odets became famous after the successful staging of the agitprop Waiting for Lefty, a play which was influenced. by Odets' association with the Group Theatre, whose founding members were great admirers of the Moscow Art Theatre. This essay traces the evolution of agitprop theatre as an expression of social drama in the United States, concentrating on the influence immigrants had in the process. Though the bulk of the paper will focus on the 1930s, it will also be discussed European Expressionism and the resurgence of agitprops and social dramas in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in Chicano theatre.
