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A Popular Vision: The Arts and the Left in New Zealand 1930-1950

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The differences observed between Modern Books in Wellington and Progressive Books in Auckland were repeated in the theatre. In Wellington in the 1930s there was no left theatre movement based on the Communist Party, WEA or trade union movement, although this was not entirely for lack of interest. An advertisement placed in the Workers' Weekly in July 1936 asked 'workers interested in proletarian art (especially dramatic)' to attend a meeting with the object of forming a 'workers' art club' in Wellington.94 A few weeks later the Weekly printed a letter from 'Birchie', alias A. J. Birchfield, president of the Wellington tramways union and a district executive member of the Communist Party, who was laid up in hospital after an industrial accident and had been inspired by a concert given by some of the patients to ask: 'What's wrong with beginning a Workers' Theatre Movement?'95 But these initiatives do not appear to have been pursued. Instead, what left theatre there was in Wellington in the 30s emerged from the city's academic institutions, Victoria University College and the Wellington Teachers' Training College.

94 Workers' Weekly, 18 July 1936, p.4

95 Ibid., 1 Aug. 1936, p.2