• The Value of InactionUnions, Labor Codes, and the Cleveland Play House
• Jeffrey Ullom (bio)

In 2015, Lynn Nottage premiered Sweat at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and soon the play took the American theatre by storm.¹ Following a stint at the Arena Stage and then a six-week Off-Broadway run at the Public Theater in 2016, the production transferred to Broadway. Nominations for multiple awards followed. The play won the 2017 Obie Award for Best Play as well as the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.² Given Sweat’s meteoric rise, numerous professional theatre companies across the country jumped at the chance to produce the compelling drama. New York Times theatre critic Charles Isherwood described Nottage’s work as “a trenchant and insightful analysis of the consequences of the sharp decline in factory work in the country, and the gutting of once-mighty unions.”³ Patrons of the Cleveland Play House easily could assume that artistic director Laura Kepley chose Sweat for the 2018–2019 season because of the city’s celebrated history with manufacturing, industry, and unions. However, when theatregoers gathered in the Outcalt Theatre on October 13, 2018, to watch the local premiere of Sweat, they were likely unaware of the Cleveland Play House’s unique and troubled history with local unions, including one event in particular that only recently came to light.⁴ The 1930s found the Cleveland Play House engaged in a decade-long conflict with local unions, resulting in legislative battles and even a firebombing. In the midst of the heated tensions and facing pressure to respond in the press and in legislative debates, Cleveland Play House director Frederic McConnell chose a path of inaction, and his choice potentially altered the landscape of professional theatre in the United States.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, various theatrical unions struggled to cement their position in the industry, and their desire for leverage often resulted [End Page 53] in conflicts with producers and artists at theatres of every size and location. Perhaps one of the most infamous battles between a union and an institution occurred in Cleveland and involved a local attack on the Play House. Founded in 1915, the Cleveland Play House remains the longest-running professional theatre in America, and it certainly endured growing pains. The six years following the founding of the Cleveland Play House were tumultuous. By 1921, the theatre was in disarray and searching for administrative and financial stability—not only had the organization occupied six different performance spaces in four different buildings (two houses, a barn, and a renovated church), but the Cleveland Play House also suffered from substantial debt, decreasing membership, and a vacancy in leadership as its founding director abruptly quit the group to pursue work in New York.⁵ In dire need of immediate support, the Cleveland Play House abandoned any agenda it may have pursued as an art theatre and resorted to becoming a community theatre in order to survive.

The board of trustees’ first step toward recovery was one of the wisest decisions made in the Cleveland Play House’s entire history—hiring three professionals from outside the organization to helm the theatre. Thomas Wood Stevens, the dean of the School of Theatre at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, recommended to former student Frederic McConnell that he consider applying for the position as director of the Cleveland Play House. While en route to California, McConnell stopped in Cleveland and viewed a production of three Eugene O’Neill one-act plays.⁶ According to Julia McCune Flory’s personal account of the earlier years of the Play House, “There is no record of McConnell’s thoughts concerning this one performance; however, he must have enjoyed it because he not only accepted the position, but he married the leading actress of the show.”⁷ As a student at Carnegie Institute of Technology, McConnell befriended K. Elmo Lowe (a director and actor) and Max Eisenstat (a designer and production designer), and these three men became knowns as “the triumvirate” when hired to manage and grow the Cleveland theatre.⁸ As a leader, McConnell provided the theatre with much-needed stability through a coherent and unified vision for the...

• 不作为工会，劳工法典和克利夫兰剧院的价值
• 杰弗里·乌洛姆（生物）

2015年，林恩·诺塔格（Lynn Nottage）在俄勒冈莎士比亚戏剧节上首次公演了《汗水》，不久该剧就席卷了美国剧院。¹在竞技场舞台上任职一段时间，然后在2016年在公共剧院进行了为期六周的非百老汇演出之后，作品又转移到了百老汇。随后提名了多个奖项。该剧获得了2017年Obie最佳剧本奖和2017年普利策戏剧奖。²鉴于Sweat的迅速崛起，全国许多专业剧院公司纷纷抓住机会制作了引人入胜的戏剧。纽约时报剧院评论家查尔斯·伊舍伍德（Charles Isherwood）将Nottage的工作描述为“对该国工厂工作急剧减少以及曾经强大的工会的胆怯所产生的后果进行的深刻而有见地的分析。” 克利夫兰剧院的^3位赞助人很容易假设艺术总监劳拉·凯普利（Laura Kepley）选择Sweat作为2018-2019赛季的服装，因为这座城市拥有悠久的制造业，工业和工会历史。但是，当看戏的人于2018年10月13日聚集在Outcalt剧院观看《汗水》在当地的首映时，他们很可能没有意识到克利夫兰剧院与当地工会的独特和困扰的历史，尤其是最近才来的一项活动。光。⁴1930年代，克利夫兰剧院（Cleveland Play House）与当地工会发生了长达十年的冲突，引发了立法斗争，甚至引发了轰炸。在紧张的紧张气氛中，以及在新闻界和立法辩论中面临回应的压力下，克利夫兰剧院（Cleveland Play House）导演弗雷德里克·麦康奈尔（Frederic McConnell）选择了不采取行动的道路，他的选择有可能改变美国专业戏剧的格局。

在整个1920年代和1930年代，各种戏剧工会都在努力巩固自己在电影界的地位，他们对杠杆的渴望常常导致[End Page 53]与各种规模和位置的剧院的制片人和艺术家发生冲突。工会和机构之间最臭名昭著的战斗之一可能发生在克利夫兰，涉及对Play House的局部袭击。克利夫兰剧院（Cleveland Play House）成立于1915年，至今仍是美国运行时间最长的专业剧院，并且无疑经受了不断增长的痛苦。克利夫兰剧院成立后的六年是动荡不安的。到1921年，剧院陷入混乱，并寻求行政和财务稳定性-不仅该组织在四个不同的建筑物（两个房子，一个谷仓和一栋翻新的教堂）中占据了六个不同的表演空间，而且克利夫兰剧院也遭受了损失负债累累，会员人数减少，⁵迫切需要立即提供支持，克利夫兰剧院（Cleveland Play House）放弃了原本作为艺术剧院所追求的议程，而求助于社区剧院以求生存。

董事会迈向康复的第一步是克利夫兰剧院（Cleveland Play House）整个历史上做出的最明智的决定之一-从组织外部聘请三名专业人员来领导剧院。卡内基技术学院戏剧学院院长托马斯·伍德·史蒂文斯（Thomas Wood Stevens）向前学生弗雷德里克·麦康奈尔（Frederic McConnell）推荐他考虑申请担任克利夫兰剧院（Cleveland Play House）的主任。在前往加利福尼亚的途中，麦康奈尔在克利夫兰停下来，观看了三部尤金·奥尼尔的单演剧本。⁶根据茱莉亚·麦克库纳·弗洛里（Julia McCune Flory）对剧场早年的个人描述，“麦康奈尔（McConnell）关于这一表演的想法没有记录；他没有任何记录。但是，他一定很享受，因为他不仅接受了这个职位，而且还嫁给了节目的女主角。” ⁷作为卡内基理工学院的学生，麦康奈尔与K. Elmo Lowe（导演兼演员）和Max Eisenstat（设计师兼制作设计师）结为朋友，而这三人在受雇管理和成长时被称为“三重奏”。克利夫兰剧院。⁸作为领导者，麦康奈尔通过一致，统一的愿景为剧院提供了急需的稳定性。