Workers in ‘conscientization’ through theatre in the so-called underdeveloped countries tend to assume that this form of theatre work has a potential unique to such circumstances. R. G. Davis, who was founding director of the San Francisco Mime Troupe in the ‘sixties, argues that the poorer sections of the richest nation in the world have no less been deprived of their cultural roots, and here describes his experiences when he was asked to direct a play dramatizing a workplace incident in the cannery town of Watsonville, northern California, when a Mexican worker was appealing for reinstatement against unfair dismissal. A regular contributor to the former Theatre Quarterly, most recently in TQ 40 (1981) on his productions of Dario Forin the USA, R. G. Davis's own version of We Won't Pay, We Won't Pay, was published last year by Samuel French, and he has recently directed a Native American play in San Jose, followed by a Brecht play in Australia.