Plays and Performance
While this practice might seem like just another form of recreation and fun for the students, acting, dramatizations, and plays were relevant to the labor movement as a whole, functioning as a means of disseminating information among workers in clear and emotionally stirring ways. Dramatic production went hand in hand with the passionate tradition of labor songs, such as “Bread and Roses”— a song that is still a mainstay of any undergraduate Step Sing during the academic term. The Summer School students also had their own version of a lantern ceremony, reminiscent of the Lantern Night celebrations that have run across Bryn Mawr's history.
The Brookwood Labor College, the nation’s first full-year residential labor college, had a nationally-renowned theater troupe that toured the United States through the 1930s to extensive acclaim, performing works at labor gatherings that promoted pro-union ideals. While Bryn Mawr’s dramatic productions did not have the notoriety that Brookwood’s program did, several productions were performed for the surrounding community to positive reviews. Florence Hemley Schnider’s 1941 report, Patterns of workers' education: The story of the Bryn Mawr Summer School, in following the lives of Summer School students after their graduation in a wide-reaching survey, found that multiple students continued acting in labor performances in their local communities, using the lessons they learned at Bryn Mawr as a foundation for careers in labor organization as they performed at union events and major labor conferences.¹
Several students cite the acting and roleplaying exercises they underwent at the college as key lessons in empathy and understanding other groups, especially in the conflicts in ideology between the union and anti-union workers on campus, but likely nothing drew the students together more than the two festivals put on during the course of the summer—the Trade Festival and the International Festival. Both celebrated student diversity and the various backgrounds that each worker had before attending the School, with the Trade Festival focusing on the specific kinds of work done at their factories or mills, and the International Festival focusing on the culture and heritage of the student body.
The Trade Festival, taking place in the gymnasium (now the Campus Center) often consisted of demonstrations of jobs held by students, displays of finished products, and skits of workplace culture. The event was often preceded by a flurry of activity as students assembled their displays and wrote home for examples of their work. Student instructors, usually undergraduates from Bryn Mawr or other Seven Sisters colleges, worked tirelessly to sew costumes or create props.
The International Festival likewise was constructed in a storm of activity between classes, with students introducing folk songs, traditional dress, dances, and foods of every culture to their peers. While most of the costumes represented the workers’ own backgrounds, it is important to note that several costumes and performances reflected cultures of those not present in the school, including costumes based on stereotypes or pop-culture depictions of Asian, African, and Middle-Eastern identities. While the ceremony was a celebration of diversity among workers and helped to foster understanding and communication between groups, one should take caution in analyzing who is telling the stories they were hearing, and from what perspective they were viewing cultures other than their own.
¹ Schnider, Patterns of workers' education: The story of the Bryn Mawr Summer School, 120.