“We gotta make up our minds”: Waiting for lefty, workers' theatre performance and audience identification

Abstract

Waiting for Lefty sits uneasily at the peak of the American workers’ theatre movement of the 1930s. Odets crafted a play that relied a great deal on previous labor dramas and theory, but he diluted many of his sources in issues presented and in methods of performance. In this article, I place Lefty in its times theatrically and examine how, during its performance, Odets addressed his audience members; how he indoctrinated them into the issues of the labor movement; and how he created a labor hall in the theatre, transforming not just the space, but the audience, too. However, after the performance, after creating a workers’ community in the theatre space, Odets left his audience with no direction from which to enact radical change.

Key words:

• Odets
• Waiting for Lefty
• workers' theatre
• reception