Classic Stage Company is surrounding its revival of Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty with a run of sit-ins and panel conversations on the labor movement, from New York’s organizing history to the protest song, across the production’s limited engagement on East 13th Street.
Each sit-in, the company says, is meant as a place for audiences to sit together and recognize what organized labor has meant across America’s history, and what it means now. Steven Pasquale, the actor making his directing debut with the production, takes part in three of the sessions. Further guests are still to be announced for each.
- Thursday, October 29, 7pm — “Metropolis Rising”: a panel on the history of labor activism in the city and the state, with Sarah Seidman, curator of “Raise Your Voice: New York Activism” at the Museum of the City of New York; Ruth Milkman, Distinguished Professor at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies; and the NYU labor historian Jacob Remes.
- Saturday, November 7, 7pm — “The Art of Labor”: straight after the performance, Pasquale talks with Risa L. Lieberwitz, Professor of Labor and Employment Law at Cornell’s ILR School and academic director of the ILR Worker Institute, about labor rights in the 21st century. Odets wrote the play in 1935, months before the National Labor Relations Act became law.
- Thursday, November 12, 7pm — “Which Side Are You On?”: folk music, protest songs and performance, with Pasquale; Erik Della Penna, guitarist and composer of Dead Outlaw on Broadway and a collaborator of Natalie Merchant since 2001; and the scholar and Afrofuturist folk performer Jake Blount.
- Friday, November 13, 7pm — post-show sit-in: Pasquale with Tyne Rafaeli, who directs Odets’ Awake and Sing! for Manhattan Theatre Club on Broadway later this season, on politically engaged theater and the early-20th-century playwrights who wrote for their moment.
- Sunday, November 15, 2pm — “There is a Future”: a panel on Odets’ life and work, with guests including Doug Reside, archivist of the Odets papers at the New York Public Library’s Billy Rose Theatre Division, and contemporary directors of the plays.
- Friday, November 20, 7pm — post-show sit-in: a closing conversation, guests to be announced.
The theater’s Classic Perspectives talkbacks also return for the 2026–2027 season, again curated and hosted by James Clements and Sam Hood Adrain, co-founders and co-artistic directors of the Brooklyn company What Will the Neighbors Say?, which has premiered 11 original plays in six cities. After select performances they bring artists, scholars and members of the creative team together to talk through the production’s themes.
Odets’ breakthrough play gathers New York taxi drivers of the Depression in a single room, waiting for a leader who has not arrived while they decide whether to strike. Pasquale’s staging, which the company describes as turning the theater into a union hall, adds original music and arrangements by Yeller Tooth (Sahar Milani and Cameron Scoggins) and choreography by Susan Misner. The company, which has already met the press, is Tala Ashe, Raffi Barsoumian, Austin Durant, Greg Hildreth, Adam Kantor, Doireann Mac Mahon, Zach McNally, Milani, Scoggins and Henry Stram. Sets are by Scott Adam Davis, costumes by Márion Talán de la Rosa, lighting by Mextly Couzin and sound by Palmer Hefferan.
Previews begin on Thursday, October 15 at CSC’s Lynn F. Angelson Theater, 136 East 13th Street, with opening night on Monday, November 2, and the limited engagement closes on Sunday, November 22. Tickets for Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty are on sale now.
