When first staged in New York City in 1935, Waiting for Lefty made a sensation of its playwright, Clifford Odets. He became the theatrical conscience of his generation, much as Arthur Miller and Tony Kushner would be later for theirs.

Odets’ time-honored play, set during the Depression, follows a meeting of a New York cab drivers’ union on the verge of a strike and illuminates the heart-wrenching tales of several of the cabbies. One of them, left-leaning advocate Lefty Costello, is mysteriously absent.

Kansas City’s Equity Actors' Readers' Theatre (EARTh) commemorates Labor Day with a script-in-hand reading of the one-act drama, which was inspired by a 40-day strike of New York cab drivers in 1934.