The Winnipeg New Theater

In the 1930s, a group of leftists teamed up to prove that political plays could be both interesting and funny. In this quest, they would have run-ins with the police, feud with student columnist at the Manitoban, and venture to Ontario to win the Dominion Drama Festival.

Listen here:

Sources

Smith, Doug. 1990. Citizen and Socialist: Joe Zuken.

Cassidy, Christian. 2021. “Winnipeg's progressive theatre company of the 1930s and 40s.” West End Dumplings.

Shaw, Irwin. 1936. Bury the Dead.

Wright, Robert and Robin Endres (Ed). 1976. Eight men speak, and other plays from the Canadian workers' theatre.

Giovannone, Aaron. 2022. “Poet for Our Times: Returning to the words of Dorothy Livesay”, Literary Review of Canada.

Fothergill, Robert. 2012. “Impolite Companies Political theatre’s rich, neglected history”. Literary Review of Canada.
Hasenbank, Andrea. “How Canadian Socialists Built a Working-Class Print Culture During the Great Depression”, The Jacobin (Oct 2021).

“Eight Men Silenced”, 2011 Editing Modernism in Canada.

Archives of Manitoba. 1984/84. Interview with Joseph Zuken (tape 1 of 8). Doug Smith Fonds.