Slaughter City

The theatre has provided a forum for exploring labor issues ever since the heyday of the “workers’ theatre” movement in the 1920s and ’30s. Many plays during this period were influenced by the theories of German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who believed that theatre should engage audiences intellectually in order to inspire them to act after the curtain falls. In 1935, Clifford Odets ended his play Waiting for Lefty by having the actors urge the audience to leave the theatre shouting, “Strike! Strike!”