STREET THEATER IN AN
INFORMATION AGE

AGIT-PROP was a collaborative work of MediaARTS, HotHouse Theatre Co. and New Line Theatre. The plays “The Cradle Will Rock” and “It's All True” were performed as rotating repertory productions at the ArtLoft Theatre, located three blocks from the Media Lab. These dramas set in the Great Depression, a period of labor unrest and censorship, are representative of "agit-prop - political street theatre”, a theatre for agitation and propaganda. It was a vibrant element of popular political theatre in the 1920s and 1930s.

At the end of each evening's play the cast of “The Cradle Will Rock” and “It's All True” invited the audience to join them and walk to the Media Lab. Once at the Lab, the actors in their period costumes replaced the media/video jockey/ artists who were working in the lab. In control of computers and projectors the actors surfed the Internet and projected images and text from archival labor sites and trade unions web sites; web sites from Pennsylvania and as far as South Africa. The actors were now telling a story in a different voice, one separated by over 60 years, but a story similar to what they told on the stage earlier that evening.

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