{"id":903233,"date":"2026-09-24T03:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T03:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/903233\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T03:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T03:00:09","slug":"australia-banned-this-anti-fascist-play-in-1936-at-the-request-of-the-nazis-ninety-years-on-its-being-staged-again-australian-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/903233\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia banned this anti-fascist play in 1936 at the request of the Nazis. Ninety years on, it\u2019s being staged again | Australian theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>\u2019 Till the Day I Die found itself at the centre of controversy in Australia when it was banned by the federal government<\/a> at the request of the Nazi party\u2019s consul general, on the grounds it was offensive to a \u201cfriendly foreign nation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Odets\u2019 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\u2019s New Theatre \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019re staging a new production of it for this year\u2019s Melbourne<\/a> fringe festival in the car park of the Trades Hall building on the back of their own truck. \u201cWe got excited by these artists refusing to be banned, about the idea of a necessary theatre,\u201d Wilson says.<\/p>\n

Sfetkidis was intrigued by the story of Till the Day I Die, but concerned the play itself might be painfully didactic and outdated. \u201cI found a copy in the library, read it and went straight to Mark: have you read this?\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019re also surprisingly considered and psychologically astute. \u201cOdets was a method-trained actor,\u201d Wilson says, \u201cso he can\u2019t help but write extraordinarily complex and well-rounded characters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson and Sfetkidis have marshalled a professional cast of almost 30 actors for their restaging of Till the Day I Die. Photograph: Charlie Kinross\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Till the Day I Die is concerned with the battle between idealism and pragmatism, and asks if one activist\u2019s 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: \u201cWe\u2019re in this weird time now where people don\u2019t want to discuss things politically, because they\u2019re scared they\u2019re going to upset someone.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markFighting against the forces of fascism is going to be much larger than anybody\u2019s lifetimeMark Wilson<\/p>\n

Odets\u2019 work fell into obscurity not from any lack of merit, but because the times changed around him. \u201cAs soon as the world accepted the abuses of Stalinism,\u201d Wilson explains, \u201cit became very difficult to put these plays on as light entertainment.\u201d Overtly political theatre hasn\u2019t exactly been in vogue recently, but Wilson argues that all theatre is political, especially when it pretends not to be. \u201cA lot of rightwing theatre is made in this country that we pretend isn\u2019t rightwing. There\u2019s that old saying: if you think you\u2019re neutral, you\u2019re on the side of the oppressor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson and Sfetkidis aren\u2019t simply remounting the original Melbourne production; they are attempting to rekindle its activist intent. They have marshalled a professional cast of almost 30 actors. \u201cWe only rehearse on weekends, so people can go to their jobs and earn money,\u201d Sfetkidis laughs. While it may have been tempting to apply for government funding, Sfetkidis felt that might compromise the project somehow: \u201cThat also comes with the kind of political interrogation we don\u2019t need. Sometimes you want to be independent so you can be free.\u201d<\/p>\n

The directors were inspired to revisit Till The Day I Die as an act of leftist solidarity. Photograph: Charlie Kinross\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Till The Day I Die is an example of agitprop \u2013 a portmanteau of agitation and propaganda \u2013 that took hold in the Soviet theatre as a way of manipulating and harnessing public opinion towards the party cause. It\u2019s hard to see theatre shifting much of anything these days, but Wilson and Sfetkidis see value in simply putting up a fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work is long and the work is ongoing, and fighting against the forces of fascism is going to be much larger than anybody\u2019s lifetime,\u201d Wilson says. Sfetkidis quickly agrees: \u201cI feel that\u2019s true for the characters in the play; they also feel the work will go beyond them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe joy of this piece,\u201d Wilson says, \u201cis that it\u2019s both an agitprop play that is unapologetically anti-Nazi and it\u2019s an extraordinary drama about human beings. It\u2019s ultimately about the personal cost of political commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Till The Day I Die<\/a> is on as part of Melbourne fringe festival, Festival Hub: Trades Hall \u2013 The Car park, 1-4 October<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It might be difficult to imagine these days, but there was a time when theatre in Australia was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":903234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":["post-903233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/903234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}