Waiting For Lefty Play Analysis

Theatre, throughout history, has been used as an implement to stimulate social change. Though, one may wonder: how can a simple play spark social change? “Waiting for Lefty,” a Great Depression-Era American play about labor strikers confronting the corruption of the United States government and unions, uses various techniques to trigger social commotion. Among these are the use of agitprop, defined as “agitative propaganda” and audience participation. In sum, “Waiting for Lefty” stimulates social change by strategically implementing agitprop and audience participation, and it does so effectively. To begin, agitprop, an artistic Russian tactic where some artist would purposefully aggravate their audience to take action on a given subject, is

The play’s ending agitates the audience because it is unfair: there is no catharsis to be had in such an abrupt ending. This feeling of aggravation must have been amplified at the time of “Waiting for Lefty’s” release. Let us then, for a second, imagine that a family man during the Great Depression is out of a job. He feels inadequate; he feels like his country has failed him; he feels like he has failed his family. Imagine, then, he goes to see “Waiting for Lefty” which is a play that, at least, somewhat represents his current situation. For him, the ending leaves no feeling of completeness. It only leaves a hunger for catharsis. What better way to feed this hunger than to take action oneself? Yet, while agitprop certainly seems to be implemented in the play to spark social change, let us turn our attention to another factor of this sparking: audience participation. In “Waiting for Lefty,” during strike sequences in the script, actors are scattered throughout the audiences. Some actors leave the audience to go on stage, and some actors stay in the audience area yet still cry and shout. For example, a man from the audience yells at Clayton, a man paid by industrialists to deter the strike, to stop talking and sit down (23-24). Essentially, the play seems to simulate civil disobedience for the audience; the audience seems to be an active member of a striking ensemble! But, one might ask, what kind of effect would this participation really have on those