Theater

Theatre Row Workers Unanimously Demand Voluntary Recognition Of Their New Union: Theatre Shop Union

December 15, 2022 Left Voice. Organize! Labor Movement, New York (NY), New York City (NYC), Theater, Worker Rights and Jobs

New York City, New York - On Tuesday, December 13, workers at Theatre Row — a multi-venue theatre in New York City — submitted a unanimous card campaign to the board of their parent organization, Building for the Arts, demanding voluntary recognition of their new union. This union — Theatre Shop Union (TSU) — is an independent union and the first of its kind in the theatre industry. In a press release, TSU wrote: We, the workers of Theatre Row, are proud to announce our intent to organize a new, independent union: Theatre Shop Union (TSU). With one hundred percent support from workers eligible, the twenty-five members of TSU went to the Building for the Arts board on December 13th to demand voluntary recognition of our union. Regardless of the board’s decision, we are eager to meet them at the bargaining table to negotiate a contract that meets our demands.

Teaching ‘Les Misérables’ In Prison

May 30, 2018 Chris Hedges, Truthdig.com Educate! Education, Prisons, Theater

I spent the last four months teaching Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel “Les Misérables” at a maximum-security prison in New Jersey. My students—like Hugo’s main character, Jean Valjean, who served 19 years in prison—struggle with shame, guilt, injustice, poverty and discrimination, and yearn for redemption and transformation. The novel gave them a lens to view their lives and a ruling system every bit as cruel as Hugo’s 19th-century France. “Les Misérables” was wildly successful when it was published, including among Civil War soldiers in the United States, although Hugo’s condemnation of slavery was censored from Confederate copies. It was American socialist leader Eugene V. Debs’ favorite book—he read it in French. The socialist British Prime Minister Lloyd George said “Les Misérables” taught him more about poverty and the human condition than anything else he had ever read and instilled in him a lifelong ambition “to alleviate the distress and the suffering of the poor.”

Dario Fo: Ideas That Outrage

October 24, 2016 Colin Revolting, www.redwedgemagazine.com Educate! Art, Capitalism, Theater

By Colin Revolting for Red Wedge - Dario Fo, who died this past week, was a great playwright of the years of unrest and rebellion in the 1960s and ’70s. His plays such as Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! were hilariously cutting critiques of life under capitalism as it went into crisis. His style of theatre was like a Brecht play performed by the Marx Brothers in the age of TV. They even became long running hits in London’s West End.

Bronx Theater Uses Avant-Garde Theater To Teach Activism

June 24, 2015 Araz Hachadourian, www.yesmagazine.org Create! Art, Creative Resistance, New York City (NYC), Theater

By Araz Hachadourian in Yes Magazine - A recent study revealed that nearly half of people between the ages of 13 and 22 have experienced online harassment. Of those surveyed, one-third did nothing when they saw someone else being bullied. It’s an issue the members of the historically Latino Pregones Theater in the South Bronx, New York, saw in their community. So they wrote a play about it—and not just any play. They used a tradition of avant-garde theater to make sure that audience members leave better prepared to take action when they see cyber-bullying take place in their lives. The play is part of a program called “Pregones Emotions,” a blend of traditional theater, improv, and audience participation that the group started performing with local middle schools in 2006.

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