The Theatre: Agit-Prop

"AgitProp"

In the lush 1920's there mushroomed in the U. S. the Little Theatre Movement in which strictly art-for-art's-sake productions were presented by serious amateurs, earnest dilettantes. Far more serious, far more earnest is the Depression-born movement of workers' theatres which are currently putting on "agitprop" (agitational propaganda) plays in 300 U. S. cities.

Theatres of protest arose in Manhattan as early as 1927, earliest organizations being the New Playwrights Theatre, the Workers Laboratory (recently rechristened the Theatre of Action), the Artef Players, Theatre Collective, the German Prolit-Buehne. This was the...

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