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.