It might be difficult to imagine these days, but there was a time when theatre in Australia was so politically incendiary it could cause an international diplomatic scandal. A year after it premiered on Broadway in 1935, US playwright Clifford Odets’ Till the Day I Die found itself at the centre of controversy in Australia when it was banned by the federal government at the request of the Nazi party’s consul general, on the grounds it was offensive to a “friendly foreign nation”.
Odets’ play, about a communist Berliner arrested by the Nazis for producing leftwing political pamphlets, was a companion piece to his more famous Waiting for Lefty, which was staged the year before by Sydney’s New Theatre – one of a branch of theatre companies that sprang up around the globe in the 1930s that was heavily affiliated with communism. The ban was counterproductive, leading to a massive public outcry and a cobbled, surreptitious production performed on the back of a truck at Collingwood town hall in Melbourne.
That truck is a galvanising symbol of rebellion and resistance for theatre-makers Mark Wilson and Katie Sfetkidis, who have been inspired to revisit the play as an act of leftist solidarity with the past and a spur for future activism. They’re staging a new production of it for this year’s Melbourne fringe festival in the car park of the Trades Hall building on the back of their own truck. “We got excited by these artists refusing to be banned, about the idea of a necessary theatre,” Wilson says.
Sfetkidis was intrigued by the story of Till the Day I Die, but concerned the play itself might be painfully didactic and outdated. “I found a copy in the library, read it and went straight to Mark: have you read this?”
Wilson, who recently directed a production of The Glass Menagerie for Melbourne Theatre Company, has long been interested in Odets as a key antecedent of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. His plays burn with political conviction, but they’re also surprisingly considered and psychologically astute. “Odets was a method-trained actor,” Wilson says, “so he can’t help but write extraordinarily complex and well-rounded characters.”
Till the Day I Die is concerned with the battle between idealism and pragmatism, and asks if one activist’s martyrdom is worth the price when the fruits of that activism remain apocryphal. Sfetkidis also sees a direct parallel with our own culture of trepidation: “We’re in this weird time now where people don’t want to discuss things politically, because they’re scared they’re going to upset someone.”
Odets’ work fell into obscurity not from any lack of merit, but because the times changed around him. “As soon as the world accepted the abuses of Stalinism,” Wilson explains, “it became very difficult to put these plays on as light entertainment.” Overtly political theatre hasn’t exactly been in vogue recently, but Wilson argues that all theatre is political, especially when it pretends not to be. “A lot of rightwing theatre is made in this country that we pretend isn’t rightwing. There’s that old saying: if you think you’re neutral, you’re on the side of the oppressor.”
Wilson and Sfetkidis aren’t simply remounting the original Melbourne production; they are attempting to rekindle its activist intent. They have marshalled a professional cast of almost 30 actors. “We only rehearse on weekends, so people can go to their jobs and earn money,” Sfetkidis laughs. While it may have been tempting to apply for government funding, Sfetkidis felt that might compromise the project somehow: “That also comes with the kind of political interrogation we don’t need. Sometimes you want to be independent so you can be free.”
Till The Day I Die is an example of agitprop – a portmanteau of agitation and propaganda – that took hold in the Soviet theatre as a way of manipulating and harnessing public opinion towards the party cause. It’s hard to see theatre shifting much of anything these days, but Wilson and Sfetkidis see value in simply putting up a fight.
“The work is long and the work is ongoing, and fighting against the forces of fascism is going to be much larger than anybody’s lifetime,” Wilson says. Sfetkidis quickly agrees: “I feel that’s true for the characters in the play; they also feel the work will go beyond them.”
Agitprop tends to retreat in times of economic prosperity only to reappear in times of crisis, and this production aims to ride a wave of anti-fascist discourse while linking itself with the political and theatrical movements of the past.
“The joy of this piece,” Wilson says, “is that it’s both an agitprop play that is unapologetically anti-Nazi and it’s an extraordinary drama about human beings. It’s ultimately about the personal cost of political commitment.”
• Till The Day I Die is on as part of Melbourne fringe festival, Festival Hub: Trades Hall – The Car park, 1-4 October
