Abstract

Arcades

Perry Bruskin's "Telling It Like It Was," is his documentary-in-progress on the Depression-era workers theater movement. During the early years of the Depression, Bruskin performed agitprop skits at factory gates, street corners, wharves, rallies and strikes. And "Telling It Like It Was" is more than just his story. After the crash, the Communist Party seized on the idea of American workers theater-modeled on those in the Soviet Union and Germany-to disseminate Communism and to protest the Depression's suffering. Workers theaters became so popular that by 1932 around 400 of them, armed with the slogan "Theater is a Weapon," were performing all over the country. They raised money for striking miners in Kentucky and demonstrated for longshoremen in California.