Stanford Repertory Theater Festival: Theater and Labor

SRT’s summer festival culminates in an all-day community symposium exploring the role that theater has played in the struggle for workers’ rights, including the workers’ theater of the 1920s and ’30s, the Federal Theatre Project, the Group Theatre, British working class theater, and manifestations of worker-engaged theater in Germany and Eastern Europe (Bertolt Brecht, Erwin Piscator, and others). Symposium participants include keynote speaker Professor Barry Witham (Professor of Theater History, Emeritus, University of Washington), author of The Federal Theatre Project: A Case Study; Shannon Jackson (Associate Vice Chancellor for the Arts and Design, UC Berkeley), author of Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics; and Stanford’s own Peter Stansky (Frances and Charles Field Professor of History, Emeritus) and William Eddelman (Associate Professor of Design and Theatre History, Emeritus).

In addition to the speakers’ lectures, the symposium will showcase scenes from Bertolt Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule, Arnold Wesker’s Chicken Soup with Barley, Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty, and Dario Fo’s We Won’t Pay, We Won’t Pay. The program will conclude with a panel discussion with artists from the SRT main productions, Slaughter City and Waiting for Lefty.