A musical comedy on plant closures

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Steeltown, a musical comedy written, directed, and performed by the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

There is nothing inherently funny about the economic and labor issues connected with plant closures, but that hasn't stopped the San Francisco Mime Troupe and its chief script writer, Joan Holden, from celebrating the troupe's 25th anniversary with a musical comedy based precisely on those issues.

That humor can be a potent political weapon has been often remarked, by Mark Twain among others. It has been used as an effective tool for political reform (by, for example, Twain and THEATER Thomas Nast against Tammany Hall, or by Walt Kelly against Joe McCarthy), and in the hands of a master, such as Bertolt Brecht or Italy's Dario Fo, serves to drive home a point and even deepen the analysis of a contradiction. After more than two decades of practice, the Mime Troupe, too, can be counted among the masters of the technique, and have excelled in using humor to spread the word about, and help raise opposition to, American intervention in Vietnam and in El Salvador among other issues.

But these are comparatively easy issues, painted in bold black and white and lending themselves to treatment in an agitprop format, compared to the complexities of plant closures and union policies and politics. Happily the Mime Troupe has risen to the challenge with one of their most thought-provoking, not to mention entertaining, productions since A Minstrel Show in the mid-sixties.

That production, a stunningly vivid recreation of the old minstrel format, had delved beneath the surface of civil rights questions to raise issues, at that time politely ignored in many circles even within the civil rights movement, of sexual politics and class divisions, and culminated in an unmistakable call for Black Power (one that was deeply disturbing to many liberal supporters of the civil rights movement, and which probaSteeltown will tour in California through May 17. It opens in San Jose on April 12, in Pasadena May 3, in San Diego May 5, and in Los Angeles May 9. Another tour of the midwest and northern industrial states is slated for the fall. For information call 415-285-1717 Socialist Action April 1984 bly was more responsible for Troupe members being arrested after some performances than the stated complaint of obscenity).

Steeltown has similar far-reaching implications and, interestingly enough, at least one local California arts council has tried to break its contract for a performance on the grounds that local growers may be offended by its pro-union stance. Based on information gathered from the Plant Closures Project, the Midwest Center for Labor Research, and other sources, Steeltown looks at the closure of the major plant in one industrial town, at a union powerless to intervene, at workers sucked into management's version of the American dream, and at suggestions for workers taking over control of the factory; then steps back, almost 40 years, to look at the same town, same plant, and some of the same people in the heady atmosphere at the close of World War II, to trace the historical roots of some of the problems the workers face today.

It's a bold step, for it involves shifting gears on the audience right in the middle of the show, breaking the hold on our imaginations that has been secured by characters we've just gotten to know, and leaving us hanging just as the plot has come to its moment of crisis. It's also a bold step in that it departs from the Troupe's recent standard format of winding up its shows with a happy ending that provides a progressive solution to the problems raised in each piece.

But it works on both levels, for it serves as an alienation device, in the Brechtian sense, breaking the hold of both plot and character so that our minds focus all the more clearly on the issues, and looking beyond easy answers to provide audiences with historical information necessary to coming to intelligent conclusions. And, for all its structural and thematic complexity, it is also a wonderfully entertaining, brilliantly performed, an often hilariously funny piece of theater.

The first act centers on two families, the Magaracks and the Mirandas, next door neighbors in the steel town. Joe Magarack (Dan Chumley) is a middleaged worker killing himself in overtime work at the steel mill in a last ditch mass effort, encouraged by the union, to save the plant by increasing its productivity and in his own personal effort to win the company's Man of Steel Award for productive workers. His wife Annabelle (Sharon Lockwood) is conducting her own personal campaign to get Joe to take early retirement, willingly or not, and greater productivity. Just when the various plot lines have come to a head— when Joe has been injured in a plant accident, Annabelle has decided to leave him, Linda is laying down the law to Louie, and the plant closing has been announced—suddenly we're thrown back into the closing days of World War 1l.

If the first act was good, the second is splendid. Here we meet Annabelle as a young defense worker at the same mill, working alongside Linda's mother, Rita (Bonet again), and a tough Black worker named Rose (Smith). We also meet the youthful Joe (both Chumley and Lockwood seem to have shed several decades from the first act), returning from the war to take the job of the very woman he falls in love with.

It's an upbeat, up-tempo act, filled with the euphoria of the war's end and vistas of prosperity for all, staged in the lively production numbers of the forties with new songs that seem to be right out of that era. Particularly remarkable are an Andrews Sisters-type number, "National Defense Boogie," sung with impeccable style by Lockwood, Bonet, GO AWAY RETRAN and Smith, and "Stand'n With the Union," an early rhythm blues style piece sung by Smith even as her union is talking cooperation with management and women and Third World workers are beginning to lose their war-era jobs.

The euphoria builds through victory celebrations to end the production on a note of high optimism—but it's a false optimism, as the first act has already made clear. Beneath the energetic production numbers the Troupe has been laying the groundwork for the actions we have already seen, showing us women being laid off, racial tensions at the plant, an old union organizer (Robledo) whose warnings go unheeded, and the international's unwillingness to support a local strike over issues of wages and the firing of women. Steeltown sends us out of the theater highly charged with the energy, expertise, and humor of the Troupe, but also charged with information and energized about an important issue. This is the San Francisco Mime Troupe at its best.

Robert Hurwitt is Editor of West Coast Plays, Associate Editor of the East Bay Express (Berkeley), and theater critic for California Magazine.

After the Trotskyists were undemocratically expelled from the Socialist Party, he helped to found the Socialist Workers Party in 1938.

Bill Farrell remained an ardent socialist although he was gravely ill for many years. When Socialist Action was formed, he became a supporter.

We extend our deepest sympathy to his family and to his comrade and companion, Ada Farrell. Friends in the San Francisco Bay Area are planning a meeting to commemorate Bill Farrell's life and his contribution to the socialist movement. Socialist Action will publish a commemorative article in a forthcoming issue.

(continued from page 16: “Infants Before Profits!”) campaign against diarrhea. This involved teaching mothers how important it is to rehydrate babies, to give them fluids, and to bring them to the centers so they will not die, because a baby with diarrhea can die in a day or so.

And there were also campaigns for sanitation, prenatal care, and well-child care. One of the interesting things was that formula was banned in Nicaragua. There were big posters encouraging women to breast feed because they knew that breast feeding was the best for women.

But the conditions in Nicaragua today are still quite poor. And I think what this reveals is that the threat of aggression from the United States is a public health issue in Nicaragua. And this is so because if you're forced to spend money to prepare your defense, you cannot use that money to build more hospitals, improve healthcare, and buy more supplies.

So all of these issues tonight are the same. What's happening in East Oakland is the same as what happened in Nicaragua or Grenada. The main thing is getting education and taking care of mothers and babies-particularly prenatally. If we spend money for prenatal care, we're spending money for the next generation. It's like money in the bank.

But just as importantly, if there's one thing we can all do here tonight is realize that it is our sons who will be going to fight against the people of Central America. It's the young brothers that are on the streets of Oakland who will fight there. They are the ones who went to Grenada and probably didn't even know there were Black people there; and when they got there probably thought: "I'm shooting people who look just like me.' And so this is the way the war will be fought. Rockfeller won't have to send his sons. He can always find oppressed people to go fight his wars. It will be my son, my collective sons, who will be there.

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STEEL INDUSTRY CLOSED

Nan Bowe - healthcare in Nicaragua