Labor Day means something different to Colm Summers, the new artistic director of  Working Theater, a New York company about to launch its fortieth season as (in the words of their mission statement) “a professional theater for, about and with working people.” – the only such theater in New York.

Summers seemed exactly the right person to ask the question that I ask every Labor Day, which is a legal holiday created by Congress in 1884 to celebrate neither sales nor barbecues but the American labor union movement: Where are the American plays about labor — about workers, or workplaces, or unions? 

Since 1985, Working Theater has been a company “unlike any other,” according to an Actors Equity Spotlight article by Equity’s senior writer Gabriela Geselowitz. “Working Theater has produced at traditional theater spaces as well as union halls and conventions, mounted plays by world-renowned playwrights and transport workers alike, put on both readings and fully staged shows. What remains constant is the commitment to reaching new audiences, to telling stories about working people and to include workers – and labor unions – every step of the way.”

Colm, pronounced Collum (“it’s one of those deceptively spelled Gaelic name”), 30 years old, grew up the son of two journalists in a working class rural area of Ireland, where “there’s a great tradition of labor related and civically minded theater.”  He got his MFA in directing theater from Columbia University just three years ago (for his thesis, he directed two plays by Maria Irene Fornes), and has since worked first as Resident Director at the Abbey in Dublin, and then Director-in-Residence at the Geffen in L.A. (staging such works as “Every Brilliant Thing” with Daniel K. Isaac)

Summers was named artistic director of Working Theater last September, replacing Laura Carbonell Monarque, who left the theater after two decades for Santa Barbara, California’s Ensemble Theatre Company. He  continues to work as a freelance director, and was in the midst of rehearsals for a play in Chicago (Philip Dawkins’ “The Comedians” at Raven Theater), when we talked on the telephone. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Jonathan Mandell: Do you ask yourself the same question I do about the state of the labor play?

Colm Summers: This is absolutely a question we ask at Working Theater. The mandate of the company since 1985 has been to identify the next generation of plays from the working class and for the working class.

You’re also plugged into the theater world as a freelance director. Does it surprise you that such plays need a specialized venue like Working Theater?

If I’m hearing the question correctly, you’re asking if it surprises me there aren’t more plays about labor issues?

Yes

Some of my favorite playwrights in the American theater — like Martyna Majok [Ironbound, Cost of Living, Sanctuary City] and Lynn Nottage [Sweat, Clyde’s],  and even more contemporary playwrights like Alex Lin [“Chinese Republicans”]  — are examples I point to of labor-related theater being alive and well. 
But it’s true that we are an underrepresented genre. And while we may tell labor stories on stage, we have created a theater economy in which folks who are from working class  backgrounds, or lower income, don’t have the same access as people who can get MFAs and Conservatory training, which limits the kind of artists whose work we see on American stages.

Clockwise from top left: Sweat, Clyde’s, Ironbound, Cost of Living, Sanctuary City

What has your first year as artistic director been like? 

Relentless, and the honor of my life.

What do you know now that you didn’t know a year ago?

I don’t pretend to know anything, but I’m starting to believe we’re at an inflection point for the art form, and that the models we’ve been using are not working. We have the opportunity to choose in the next five to ten years whether the theater is going to become a pastime of the privileged few – boutique products, like opera – or whether we return to the core of this thing that we do, a communal democratic art form that’s about being together in space – something that should be accessible to all.

Can you go through your season and explain how each show fits the theater’s mission?

I can’t tell you about the 40th season because we will be making an official announcement about it very soon. Last season, I inherited a mainstage production from my predecessor, “Fish” by Kia Corthron. We run a number of core programs; one is called Five Boroughs/One City, which is a new play development program that pairs professional artists with communities across the five boroughs of New York City to create work about and for folks living in those communities. For that program last season, we made a play about the poor working conditions of delivery cyclists [“La Dureza”] with their union. 
One of the proudest moments of my first season was a non-traditional piece of programming responding quickly to a need within the labor movement.  The RWDSU [Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union] was organizing the REI workers, and one of their members had written a play called “Foot Wears House” We did a sort of guerrilla reading in a library downtown to support the workers,

Fish ( Josiah Gaffney, Torèe Alexandre), Foot Wears House reading, Reynaldo Piniella in “La Dureza”

“Fish” was a play about a school teacher and her relationship with a student. How does that fit in with the mission of Working Theater?

We partner very closely with the United Federation of Teachers. It’s inarguable that we fail to respect teachers and teaching staff in this country. 

This brings up the question of what a worker is. Elon Musk works, so isn’t he a worker? How do you define “worker” for your artistic purposes?

Great question. A play about Elon Musk might be a valid investigation for a company like ours to make in this moment; the billionaire class are the most influential figures in the labor lives of our time.  For my purposes, what working people means is: Is your humanity impacted by capitalism? Is your humanity impacted by the work you do every day? Is it delimited or transgressed upon in some way? If we can see a broad enough church to include everyone whose lives are touched by the work they do, we can start to create a bigger coalition against unfair workplace practices, and be a bastion for the labor movement in that way.

  Why are there so few theater productions about working class lives in the U.S.? Is it because Americans by and large don’t see themselves as workers or working class but as middle class? Is it because workplace comedies are what happens on TV? Is it the anti-union attitude of many theater producers? Is it that such shows are too associated with a particular political point of view that feels out of date, earnest 1930’s “Waiting for Lefty” fare?

As artistic director at Working Theater. I can’t say that my experience reflects the frame of the question. I think actually we have an incredibly robust artistic interest in working people and in the lives touched by labor. I think that we are living through a time of incredible galvanization and activation for working class people in this country. We are living through the greatest period of union enrollment in, like, forty years. That has not yet been reflected by our theater, but I think it’s coming.

You say “we have an incredibly robust interest.” Who’s the “we”?

Who’s the we?  I’m thinking about a broad increase in participation in the mainstream labor movement. I’m thinking about the cultural organizers across New York City. If you’re talking about interest, I can tell you we get nine new play submissions a week. We have more new plays about labor than we can read. 
You can hear why I’m resistant to the idea that there’s a lack of interest.
There may be a lack of support – but for reasons that are far-reaching. It’s not that plays specifically about labor are not supported; it’s that plays and playwrights in general are not supported.  We are not thinking systemically about how to support the art form. We are trying to clasp to dwindling, subscriber audiences or access the same kind of audiences anew. We’re living through a time of failure of imagination about what the audience of the future should look like.

I’m curious about your reaction to the Broadway season just past. There are four shows that were arguably set in a workplace, or focus on workers – if you have a very generous definition of workplace and workers. The most obvious one is Jocelyn Bioh’s Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, set among the workers in a hair salon in Harlem,  Then there was “The Shark is Broken,” a play about the actors on set for the filming of Jaws; “Stereophonic,” about a rock band making an album, and maybe “Merrily We Roll Along.” Two shows presented class conflict, but I think in the most superficial of ways: Enemy of the People and The Great Gatsby.
Which of these fit the bill for you?

That’s an interesting array of shows. If you’re asking me my taste in shows, that’s a longer conversation.  In terms of Working Theater, a lot of these shows you mentioned are not explicitly exploring the systems that limit workers’ lives or create injustice. I don’t think any of them would find themselves in a Working Theater season.
At the same time, we try not to be what we think of as issue-driven, we try to think about plays for working people that don’t fall into easy expectations. You mentioned Clifford Odets “Waiting for Lefty”  While there’s a place for Clifford Odets, certainly in theater history, we try to be inventive about the programming choices. I don’t want to limit the horizon of what we can program at my company.

But you mentioned earlier that your interest is in plays in which humanity is impacted by capitalism.  How intrinsic is a particular political point of view for plays about labor or about the workplace? How many different political perspectives could be reflected and still be called a play about working and workers?

I would swat the question back to you. How many different kinds of working people are there? I mean, we live in a country where a huge number of working class white Americans consider the 45th president to be a viable reelection candidate.
But I will never run a theater company that police the voices that exist on stage. I think that would make for a less interesting and less healthy theater. Who wants to live in an echo chamber?  If we are serious about base building, then we have to have serious conversations. 
One of the things that the right is fantastic at is finding common ground. Unfortunately, we on the left have been dogged with infighting. I’m hopeful that as a company, we can be a place for real conversations to happen, and the rubber meets the road in terms of organizing. Does that make sense?

Well, as you alluded to when talking about the former president, there’s been a shift in political alliances, and a lot of talk about the right capturing the working people’s votes. You made clear what your political perspective is, and I was wondering whether you feel that perspective is necessary for satisfying plays about workers.

If you’re asking me if my politics inform my taste, I would have to say yes. My politics is my humanity, and my humanity is where my taste begins. The counterpoint to that is, do we make an active, conscientious effort to create space for perspectives which are not our own? You know, so that we can build a bigger coalition, build a bigger “we.” So that we try to have a bigger, more far reaching conversation than the limit of our own perspectives, right? And that’s what drama is. What is drama other than conflict?

Alright, so what shows look promising for the future, this season or announced for coming seasons? For example, there’s a musical version of the movie Working Girl,  composed by Cindy Lauper with book by Teresa Rebecca. Is that something that’s on your radar, or is that totally from another planet? 

First and foremost, the season we have planned is really robust.  We’re celebrating 40 years and we’re trying to celebrate in style. 

Like what?

I’m not going to tell you anything about it except I think it’s going to be the biggest celebration. of theater and labor probably ever in the United States.

You’re such a tease. How about other theaters’ shows?

One that stands out for me is “In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot,” written by Sarah Mantell and directed by Sivan Battat at Playwrights Horizons. It’s an important example of a contemporary playwright at a major league New York institution who is thinking in a creative way about labor issues and labor futures.  I’m a huge fan of them as a team.

Last question: Why should anybody care whether there is theater that focuses on working life?

You know, the average household income of the Broadway theatergoer is reported to be close to $300,000 a year. Obviously the ticket prices exclude the vast majority of Americans. As I said, theater should not just be for the privileged. If that’s the road we choose to go on, the art form is dead. 
Theater should be affordable: At Working Theater, all our programs are on a sliding scale; tickets can be as low as zero dollars. And the stories we tell on stage need to reflect all audiences.
It matters because the more that theater embraces the idea of accessibility, the stronger future we can build.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Colm.,

Thank you, Jonathan. Have a really lovely day. In solidarity to you

Some labor plays I’ve seen in New York over the past few years

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