Iron Clad Agreement (Theatrical company).

The Iron Clad Agreement was founded in Pittsburgh in 1975 by Julia Swoyer and K. Wilson Hutton as a traveling forum for producing original theater productions. Their work integrated historical research and live theatre emphasizing the performer as the most portable element of theatre. The Iron Clad Agreement sought to explore the age of America's Industrial Revolution--its inventors, workers, feminists, and labor leaders. Scripts and songs were written specifically for or by the company in the unique Iron Clad style, somewhere between vaudeville and documentary drama. The group performend extensively in education settings for audiences of all ages and economic backgrounds. Besides performances, the company's services included post-performance discussions; artistic and administrative internships; and workshops in acting, directing, movement, speech and voice. In 1981, the company moved their central base of operation to New York City and expanded their territory for presentations of live history-oriented theatre productions to include most of the U.S., U.K. and Hong Kong. They also expanded to include television, film and radio productions around the same thematic focus. Major premiers included Edison at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, NYC; Virgins and Dynamos at The Royal Society of the Arts, London; and The Gilded Age of Invention at the Edinburgh International Festival, Scotland. The company was also featured on Creativity with Bill Moyers television series and the Smithsonian Institution's film Mr. Edison and his Amazing Invention Factories. The company continued its unique style of blending history with theatre until its demise in 1985.