The Political Stage: The American Drama and the Theater of the Great Depression

First edition, first impression.  xii, 480pp, with a central section of monochrome plate illustrations.  Red cloth-covered boards with black and gilt titles to spine. 8vo.  An ex college library copy with library markings on front and rear endpapers, stamped on text block edges and a small library stamp on the copyright page, otherwise internally neat, clean and bright.  Cloth covers a little pushed at spine ends and a little tired.  In its original worn and chapped dust wrapper, price clipped, with tape residue marks on the interior.

The 1930s in America started with a stock market crash and ended with a clash of cannons.  The intervening years saw economic depression, social unrest and agitation for political reform.  And yet, despite this, or perhaps because of it, the arts flourished, and none more so that the performance arts of stage and screen.  American theater of the 1930s was deeply involved in the social and political causes engaging its audiences – the poverty of unemployment and the perceived social injustices, not least those of Sacco and Vanzetti and Scottsboro cases; and it plots the rise of fascism on stage, screen and through radio.  This book explores that relationship and a gamut of theatrical expression and performance of Communism, of ‘agitprop; theatre and to the commercial work of Broadway.