Introduction & Overview of Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets

Waiting for Lefty Introduction

Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty is a vigorous, confrontational work, based on a 1934 stake of unionized New York cabdrivers. Explicit political messages dominate the play, whose ultimate goal was nothing less than the promotion of a communist revolution in America. Appearing at the height of the Great Depression, the play's original 1935 production was a critical and popular sensation. Waiting for Lefty was widely staged throughout the country and brought Odets sudden fame. While its dramatic style has long since fallen out of fashion (along with the idealistic politics that inspired it), it is considered a prime example of a genre known as "revolutionary" or "agitprop" theatre. (The latter term is a combination of "agitation" and "propaganda.") The idealistic practitioners of agitprop sought to harness the power of drama to a specific political cause and create a "people's theatre" for the new world that would follow the revolution.