George Sklar: Playwright for a Socially Committed Theatre (New York).

Abstract

This study describes and analyzes the career of Marxist playwright George Sklar, who first achieved prominence in the New York theatre during the Great Depression. His militant plays of social protest, a number of which were collaborations with Albert Maltz and Paul Peters, spoke out against civic corruption, war preparations, and the unjust treatment of Negroes and other oppressed groups. Chapter I examines the critical roots of a proletarian art and surveys currents of radical thought, drama, and theatre that prevailed from 1920-1932. Chapter II accounts for Sklar's theatrical beginnings and analyzes the dramatic structure and controversial performance history of Merry-Go-Round, a thinly disguised attack on Tammany Hall. Chapter III focuses on the years 1933-1937, when Sklar was associated with the Theatre Union as playwright and activist. Peace on Earth, an antiwar play, was denounced by the established critics yet drew a large working-class audience and was praised by the radical press. Stevedore received critical acclaim in the major dailies and the left-wing press for its brilliant Negro cast, its honest portrayal of Negro life, and its plea for black and white unity. Parade resulted in an aborted attempt at a socially conscious revue when the Theatre Guild, which produced it, censored most of the controversial material. Chapter IV spans the years 1937-1967 when Sklar wrote Life and Death of an American for the Federal Theatre, worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood during the war years, became disillusioned with the theatre, turned to fiction writing during the blacklist years, and made a comeback to the stage with his lyrical drama and People All Around, a fervent protest against racial hatred. Chapter V evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Sklar's revolutionary aesthetic. The study concludes that because of his Marxian bias Sklar downgraded history, psychology, and mystery as dramatic subjects, and in his plays he sometimes distorted reality by idealizing the proletariat, stereotyping the ruling class, and attacking establishment institutions unfairly. Yet despite these shortcomings, Sklar needs to be appreciated as an activist playwright in the tradition of Jewish ethical radicalism who believed in a people's theatre dedicated to the creation of a more humane social order.