Alan Filewod, U of Guelph
Hors de Combat: Agitprop, Masculinism and the Gendered Theatre Estate

In this paper I want to pose some questions and suggest directions of response about the historical development of agitprop in the 20th century, in terms of the gendering of the theatre estate. I will suggest that the familiar image of political agitprop as theatrical militancy is a masculinist fantasy of combat reenactment that has overwritten the vast, rhizomatic field of politically engaged radical theatre which, in its actual operations, defies categorizations and refuses these militarized images. Theatre activists and historians know that in this field, combative agitprop has been the exception rather than the rule. In this paper I will argue that in the Parliament of Women, performed in Winnipeg on the stage of the Walker Theatre in 1914, we see at an early stage of development the procedural and performative outlines of the radical theatre tradition that continues to this day in the popular theatre process. Against this I will suggest reasons why the combat theatre of Leninist agitprop has been monumentalized as the iconic image of 20th century theatrical radicalism. By so doing I propose to counter Raphael Samuel’s conclusion that the theatre of the radical left has been discontinuous, and to counter the orthodox left position that the continuity of theatrical tradition has been secured by the continuity of mass parties. In response I suggest the continuity of a tradition of radical alterity characterized by local interventions, the production rather than the demonstration of power, a refusal of masculinist/military performance models, and a repudiation of the theatre economy.