EDITORIAL

• Published in: Canadian Theatre Review
• Main Author: Filewod, Alan
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) 1999
• Subjects: Visual Arts and Performing Arts; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/ctr.99.fm; https://ctr.utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/ctr.99.fm

The partnership of theatre and labour evokes images of heroic proletarian actors and workers joined in solidarity, staging agitprop at picket lines. This is an image that comes to us through many scenes, from the Blue Blouses of the Bolshevik revolution, from Piscator in the dying days of the Weimar republic, from the agitprop troupes of the 1930s. It is an image of the young George Luscombe performing on a truck to striking workers in the 1940s, of Teatro Campesino in the fields of California, of the Mummers Troupe in mining towns in Newfoundland. But while it, is heavily imbued with romantic nostalgia, it does not reflect the reality of most labour-engaged theatre work.