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Waiting for Lefty | Introduction

Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty is a vigorous, confrontational work, based on a 1934 strike of unionized New York cab drivers. Explicit political messages dominate the play, whose ultimate goal was nothing less than the promotion of a communist revolution in America. Appearing at the height of the Great Depression, the play's original 1935 production was a critical and popular sensation. Waiting for Lefty was widely staged throughout the country and brought Odets sudden fame. While its dramatic style has long since fallen out of fashion (along with the idealistic politics that inspired it), it is considered a prime example of a genre known as "revolutionary" or "agit-prop" theatre. (The latter term is a combination of "agitation" and "propaganda.") The idealistic practitioners of agit-prop sought to harness the power of drama to a specific political cause and create a "people's theatre" for the new world that would follow the revolution.

A one-act play in eight episodes, Waiting for Lefty is composed of two basic stagings. The main setting is a union hall, where the members wait to take a hotly-contested strike vote. While the corrupt union leader Harry Fatt arrogantly tries to discourage the members from walking out, support for a strike is high, and the workers nervously await the arrival of the leader of the strike faction, Lefty Costello. As they wait, members of the strike committee address the workers, each telling the story of how he came to be involved in the union and convinced of the necessity for a strike. These individual stories are sketched in a series of vignettes, played out in a small spotlit area of the stage. Each is a story of unjust victimization, mirroring Fatt's heavy-handed attempts to control the union meeting. The building tension and emotion reaches a climax when the news arrives that Lefty has been murdered, and the meeting erupts in a unanimous demand to "Strike! Strike!"

Modern audiences may find Waiting for Lefty's style and dogmatic politics strange and unfamiliar; it is rarely produced and is often characterized as an historical curiosity. More than most dramas, it is the product of a particular tune and place—for its overriding concern was to influence that time and place, not to create "immortal art," and certainly not to create diverting, light-hearted entertainment. It faced its grim times squarely and offered its audience a stirring vision of hope. In this sense Waiting for Lefty is seen as an important dramatic work that offers historical evidence of the social power and aspirations of theatre.

Waiting for Lefty Summary

Prologue: The Strike Meeting
The curtain rises on a union meeting, already in progress. Harry Fatt. the union leader, is addressing a group of workers seated before him. A six- or seven-man committee sits in a semicircle behind him. Fatt speaks forcefully against a proposed strike, noting the failure of several recent strikes, and arguing that such tactics are both unproductive and unnecessary. He expresses confidence that the President is "looking out for our interests," and suggests that those who wish to strike are communists ("reds"), out to destroy everything Americans hold dear. Despite his confidence and heated rhetoric. Fatt's message is not well-received. Throughout his speech the voices of workers rise in opposition and defiance, while the ominous presence of a "gunman," who menaces the hecklers, suggests that Fatt's leadership has less than honest democratic origins.

From the workers comes an enthusiastic call for Lefty, the (elected) chairman of the strike committee, who is mysteriously absent from the meeting. Fall suggests that Lefty has abandoned the workers. The workers demand to hear from the other members of the strike committee. Unable to calm the crowd, Fatt "insolently" gives way to Joe Mitchell, a committee member. Joe denies that he is a "red," offering his war wounds as evidence of his patriotism, and defends Lefty's courage and conviction. He speaks to the workers of their own poverty and exploitation, arguing that a strike is the only way they might achieve "a living wage." Joe tells the workers they must each make up their own minds on the issue; as for himself, "[m]y wife made up my mind last week." As he begins to relate the experience, the stage lights fade out.

Scene I: Joe and Edna
A spotlight creates a small playing space within the meeting; the workers remain "dimly visible in the outer dark," occasionally commenting on the action. Joe, a cabdriver, comes home from a long and unprofitable day's work to a desperate household. The furniture has just been repossessed, the rent is two months past due, the children have gone to bed without dinner, and his wife, Edna, is in a sullen and bitter mood. Exasperated by their poverty, Edna taunts and challenges Joe, finally threatening to leave him for her old boyfriend, Bud Haas.

Edna makes it clear that she doesn't directly blame Joe for their condition but rather the bosses who set the terms of his employment. She resents her husband for passively accepting his lot. "For God's sake, do something, Joe," Edna pleads, "get wise. Maybe get your buddies together, maybe go on strike for better money." Joe first argues that ''strikes don't work'' but later admits that the union leaders are "racketeers'' who rule by force without consulting the workers—standing up to them could cost his life. Edna replies that she'd rather see him dead if he won't fight for his family. Once more she urges him to take action by helping organize the union cabbies to "[s]weep out those racketeers," to "stand up like men and fight for the crying kids and wives." This time, her argument wins Joe over; he jumps up, kisses her passionately, and rushes out to find Lefty (who apparently has already begun organizing within the union). As Edna stands in triumph, the stage lights come up and the scene returns to the union meeting, where Joe concludes his speech by calling for a strike.

Continuing the workers' stories, Miller is called upon to relate the circumstances that brought him to the strike meeting.

Scene II: Lab Assistant Episode
After a blackout, the scene finds Miller, a lab assistant, in the luxurious office of his employer, the industrialist Fayette. Fayette compliments Miller's work, gives him a twenty-dollar raise, and tells him he's being transferred to a new project working under a "very important chemist," Dr. Brenner. Miller's gratitude for the promotion gradually dissolves as the particulars of the project are revealed. He will have to live at the lab full-time throughout the project, working in utmost secrecy. His job will be to develop chemical weapons for the military in preparation for the "new war" Fayette considers imminent. Having lost a brother and two cousins in the last war, Miller expresses reservations about the nature of the work. Fayette appeals to Miller's self-interest: the project will mean advancement in his career and personal exemption from military service. Fayette believes that the consequences of the work are "not our worry," and that business can never be "sentimental over human life.'' Finally, he asks Miller to provide him with "confidential" reports on Brenner throughout the project—to, in... » Complete Waiting for Lefty Summary