AMERICAN THEATER HISTORY - Assignment Example

(1999) further opines that Waiting for Lefty acted as an important tool that announced the primacy of American humanist dramaturgy as well as consolidated social humanistic aesthetic regimes in the American radical theatre. Odets, according to Papa (1999) created a labor hall in the theatre, changing both the audience and the space. The Waiting for Lefty was consistent with the vision of the Group Theater. Conceived in 1931, the Group Theatre vision was to transform the old-fashioned light movement that dominated American theatre in the late 1920’s.

In particular, the Group theatre wanted original American play to dramatize the life of their troubled times. Conclusively, Waiting for Lefty shared the vision of the Group Theater of transforming American theater. Unlike previous plays, waiting for Lefty successfully changed American theater by creating a union hall inside the theater hence transforming both the audience as well as the space. Waiting for Lefty has been duped by many scholars as one of the innovative play during its time. For instance, the play succeeded in incorporating the audience into the framework of the play (MacDowell & Radforth, 2006).

In addition, it effectively captured the feeling of 1930s and addressed critical issues that were considered important during the Depression such as social alternatives, racism, and space of your own as well as food for the family. MacDowell and Radforth (2006) are of the opinion that Odets brilliantly employs location, time, characterization, symbolism, dialogue and agitprop in presenting the play. Besides, Odets utilizes existing strike in developing the themes of the play and as such, he succeeded in capturing social reality of the time.

Some of the themes include struggle for human dignity, corruption of the big businesses as well as the rich and the poor (Papa, 1999). The Waiting for the Lefty employed innovating staging methods, which broke down the curtain between audiences and actors and persuaded