Dr. Joel D. Eis has been a professional designer and teacher. He has spent the majority of his career in progressive and radical theatre. He organized agitprop theatre performances during the strike for the first Ethnic Studies Program in America at San Francisco State University in 1968 and joined the grape strike-based Farmworkers’ Theater. He was an organizer for the Bay Area Theatre Workers Union in 1981.
Eis has had a professionally published textbook on stagecraft and four books on theatre and politics, including a memoir, Standin' in a Hard Rain: the Making of a Revolutionary Life with World Beyond War Press in 2023. He and his wife, Toni, own and run the Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael, California, where leftist groups and banned books clubs meet. This article is taken from notes for his latest book on labor theatre, Left off the Program: The Untold Story of Progressive Theatre in America before WWII.
