The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-02-26

White Hope of American Drama
BY MICHAEL GOLD.

its doors Wednesday, March 2, when
John Howard Lawson's Loud Speak
err" will be played at the Sind Street
Theatre.
think every labor man, every
revolutionist, everyone fascinated by
the machine age, by the noise and
hope of modern life will go to see
this play.
Lawson is the brilliant white hope
Of the American theatre. He knows
labor and he knows the modern stage.
He has close affinity to the work
of Maierhold and his revolutionary
theatre in Moscow. More than any
one, Lawson has caught the spirit of
industrial America. Most of our so
called modern" writer's, like Sher-
wood Anderson and Waldo Frank,
are frightened to death of industrial
America. They seek refuge in the
bible, in Dostoivesky, in the soul, in
Greek tragedies and what-not. But
Lawson moves freely among the sub
ways, skyscrapers, steel plants and
proletarian hells of America. He is
not trying to escape, but assimilate.
His play, professional" was the
finest, and perhaps the only real
working-class play ever produced in
America. 1t was the story of West
Virginia coal miners strike, done in
a jazz technique. 1t established al
most tradition in American theatre
art. The new play viii create an
other such precedent.
Loud Speaker" is concerned with
the humors and hypocrisies of a
Rabbit who is running for Governor
of the state, and who makes his cam
paign on the platform of the sacred
ness of the home. At the same time
he is messed up in the most awful
domestic situation of his own. The
play is a farcical cartoon, which
punctures all the fake and hokum of
our fat capitalist politicians. It is
in the spirit of Robert Minor and Art
Young, and if / were governor of the
state of New York l would suppress
it.
The New Playwright's Theatre, I'M
der whose auspices cloud Speaker"
is being produced, is a new organiza-
ton. Most of our art theatres in
New York have become timid and
bourgeois. They are afraid to ex-
pertinent. They are afraid of CUTS
and passion and revolutionary harsh
ness in the theatre. They like to
produce dainty little costume trifles,
and decadent European problem
plays, and mystic highbrow morbid
ties.
The New PIaywright's Theatre is
to get away from all this. It will
try to break down the walls that
separate the street from the theatre.
1t will be prejudiced against drawing
room plays, and sophisticated cream
puff tragedies. It will try to get
close to the earth, to the fields, fac
tories and mass-life of America. It
will be afraid of nothing.
In Lawson's play New Workers.
will have the first chance to see a
real constructivist set such as are
now used in most of the revolution
airy theatres of Soviet Russian the
Proleteult theatres, and the Maier-
hold theatres.
There will be two other plays in
the two weeks following. One of
them is a tragedy of Negro religious
hysteria, called Earth" by En- 10
Basshe. This young writer edited a
paper called "Facts" opposed to the
war, and was active in the Peoples
Council and the old Socialist Party.
1t is his second play.
The third play will be a comedy
of the Mexican revolution, called ia
Fiesta" by myself. Maybe that's
why am prejudiced in favor of this
theatre, because it is possibly the
only one in New York that will pro-
duce plays of this kind, where revo-