ANTIFASCIST STAGE
The ANTIFASCIST STAGE shows workers’ commitment to generating their own non-institutionalized and transnational modes of the collective organization through fundraising events in the United States. In their cultural fundraisers, antifascist plays were performed, artists danced and sang, speeches were delivered, dinners were served, dance orchestras played, lotteries were held, and funds were subsequently collected. Antifascist stage productions built on a tradition of the popular performance models of the 1920s and 1930s (vaudeville, comedies, light operas); marked by parodic self-representation, the popular dramaturgical genres used comedy and farce to ridicule fascist narratives. As the announcements for cultural fundraisers demonstrate, women’s contributions as organizers and performers energized this ongoing antifascist fight.
- Antifascist Stage: announcements of cultural fundraisers and the antifascist plays, and photographs and obituaries of participants.
Feu, Fighting Fascist Spain. Worker Protest from the Printing Press. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2020.
How to cite: Montse Feu. "Antifascist Stage." Fighting Fascist Spain --The Exhibits. Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Digital Collections. http://usldhrecovery.uh.edu/exhibits/show/fighting-fascist-spain--the-ex. Accessed [DATE].
Ignazio Zugadi, SHC antifascist playwriter, explains why political resistance also meant cultural continuity of radical and popular Spain in exile.
"Life is short and full of bitterness … and shorter and more bitter for the children of labor: This fact, our antifascist colony in New York knows it well ...some of us wanted unity to fight for the emancipation of humanity, other wanted union to defend and disseminate culture, others basically wanted a solidarity front … Today, no matter who organizes a fundraiser, the whole colony goes … our colony never has danced so much… if there was an entry charge in rallies, conferences, and pickets and people could dance in them, you will see how the whole colony would go. Let’s test this idea: let’s organize a picket.
Ignazio Zugadi Garmendia, "A Trabucazos" Frente Popular April 1, 1938.