Plays for Labor Day. In praise of theater about unions, workers and workplaces.
September 3, 2018 Leave a comment
It was while attending the current revival of Lillian Hellman’s 1936 play “Days to Come,” which is set during a strike at a brush factory in Ohio, that I suddenly wondered: Where are the American plays about unions, or workers, or even just workplaces?
It seems an apt question for Labor Day, which, contrary to what may be public perception, was not created to promote barbecues. Congress passed a law making Labor Day a legal holiday in 1884 to celebrate the labor union movement, a holiday first proposed by a labor union official
To The Bone,2014: Liza Fernandez, Annie Henk and Lisa Ramirez working in the poultry plant
Waiting for Lefty, 1937
When Mañana Comes, 2014. Jose Joaquin Perez, Jason Bowen, Brian Quijada and Reza Salazar as busboys in “My Manana Comes”
The worker, bloodied, toting a gun, in “Days to Come”
A Taste of Honey, 1961 Broadway, with Angela Lansbury and Joan Plowright.
Assistance, 2012
Sweat on Broadway: Alison Wright, Will Pullen, Michelle Wilson
Gloria, 2015
Jason Dirden and Nikiya Mathis in Skeleton Crew
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Wearing t-shirts that said “Now showing: Truth,” Rosie O’Donnell and dozens of other performers who had traveled from New York for the day participated in the 22nd day of protests outside the White House, in front of a bright orange “Treason” sign, making speeches and singing Broadway tunes (such as “A Brand New Day” from The Wiz) and patriotic songs, ending with “America the Beautiful.”
Perhaps you’d think it chutzpah that in “In The Body of the World,” the latest solo show by Eve Ensler, best known for “The Vagina Monologues,” she merges her story of her fight against uterine cancer with world crises such as mass rape in the Congo and the deadly oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe you’d be squeamish at her graphic storytelling of her illness, treatment and recovery, during which she literally bares her physical scars, and exposes her emotional ones, which are more disturbing. You could well disapprove of her self-defeating and dubious speculation about what might have caused her cancer – from tofu to Tab to bad reviews.
Today, the first anniversary of the inauguration of Donald Trump, is Art Action Day.
On Martin Luther King Day, many people read or listen once again to his most famous speech, from August, 1963, 
