Working Class Theater: from the California Labor School to Today
Thursday March 30, 2023 | 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
At the Tenderloin Museum 398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102
Free event!
Working class theater is powerful, fun and needed now more than ever. In this event, we will trace the lineage of activist workers’ theater in San Francisco from the California Labor School of the 1940’s to today’s Work Tales project. Our presentation will culminate with a performance by the janitor-actors of the Tenderloin based union, SEIU Local 87. They will share an excerpt of their work, Bread and Prosperity. The evening will be co-hosted by Bill Shields, director of Work Tales and Olga Miranda, President of Local 87.
The Tenderloin based California Labor School (CLS) had a vision of labor education that was broad and deep. It included nuts-and-bolts classes such as union organizing, as well as big picture topics like labor history and the arts. It offered an astonishing array of arts classes, educating the whole person to promote the power of the working class. These arts classes - in subjects like dance, literature, photography and theater - were very popular with the school’s worker-students, and their influence is still felt in the Bay Area’s arts and labor communities today.
In Working Class Theater: from the California Labor School to Today, Bill will survey the theater activities of the CLS and trace the lineage of working class theater in San Francisco through groups such as the Performing Arts Workshop, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, Eth-Noh-Tec and the Bay Area Labor Theater. Shields is the chair emeritus of the City College of San Francisco Labor and Community Studies Department, which is a direct descendant of the CLS, and hosts a series of labor culture projects that echo those CLS offered. One of these is the Work Tales project, which takes workers’ oral histories and translates them into dynamic stage productions. At this event, we will see an excerpt from one of these productions, Bread and Prosperity, presented by members of the San Francisco janitors’ union, SEIU Local 87. The union is based in the Tenderloin in the former CLS building at 240 Golden Gate Avenue.
Join us to learn about the history of working class theater in San Francisco and how it intersects with labor organizing today, especially among immigrant workers in the post pandemic era. Working Class Theater: from the California Labor School to Today is presented as part of Education for Action: California Labor School, 1942 - 1957, a special exhibit in collaboration with San Francisco State’s Labor Archives and public program series, and is inspired by the CLS arts curricula. The Labor Archives is a Work Tales partner.
The special exhibit Education for Action and this related programming is made possible thanks to a grant from California Humanities.