Rather than give in, the show's director, Orson Welles, and producer, John Houseman, set up an improvised performance in a shuttered theater, with Blitzstein as both the cast and the orchestra. As he begins the first song, the other actors suddenly appear in the audience and perform the entire play without setting foot on the stage. A group of workers destroy the mural "Man at the Crossroads", following a dispute between Nelson Rockefeller and Diego Rivera over the latter's explicit support for communism.