Federal Theatre

Established under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1935 by an act of Congress, it was designed to offer work to theatrical professionals idled by the Depression. A second aim, according to President Roosevelt's assistant Harry Hopkins was to provide “free, adult, uncensored theatre.” Hallie Flanagan, director of the Vassar Experimental Theatre, was named national director. For a time it succeeded in both its aims. At its height it employed 10,000 people, most of whom had been on relief rolls. In New York alone in 1936, some 5,385 professionals were at work, and during its just over three years of life no fewer than 12 million people attended performances in the city. Numerous companies sprang up across the country, officially directed from Washington but in reality semiautonomous, and these also provided hard‐pressed playgoers with a wide variety of inexpensive and often very good theatre. Productions ranged from imaginative revivals of old classics through new plays, children's plays, African‐American productions, plays in foreign languages, marionette shows, and evenings of dance. Elmer Rice was placed in charge of the New York branch. One of his most noteworthy, albeit controversial, innovations was the Living Newspaper, plays which were essentially theatrical documentaries. The very first offering was to be Ethiopia, which dealt with Mussolini's attack on that country and employed excerpts from his speeches and Roosevelt's response. The State Department, fearful of offending the dictator, ignored Hopkins's promise and attempted to censor the play, which prompted Rice's resignation. The play never opened. The most successful of the Living Newspapers was Arthur Arent's One Third of a Nation (1938), which took its title from Roosevelt's claim that one‐third of the country was ill‐housed, ill‐clad, and ill‐nourished. Orson Welles and John Houseman also encountered censorship problems from bureaucrats and subservient or frightened unions when they attempted to mount the virulently left‐wing musical The Cradle Will Rock (1938), but they successfully defied their opposition. Numerous African‐American theatre projects flourished in Harlem and elsewhere, as did specifically Catholic and Jewish mountings. Two particularly successful offerings were The Swing Mikado, a black jazzed version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, and a “voodoo” Macbeth set on a Caribbean island. Other high points in the Project's short life were Sinclair Lewis's political drama It Can't Happen Here (1926), which opened simultaneously in twenty‐three cities, Paul Green's long‐running outdoor history pageant The Lost Colony (1937), and the American premiere of T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral (1936). Among the other artists whose careers were launched by the Project were Joseph Cotten, Howard Bay, Will Geer, Mary Chase, Marc Blitzstein, Arlene Francis, Canada Lee, John Huston, Virgil Thomson, and Helen Tamiris. However, because many of the productions were perceived as and, indeed, often were blatantly left‐wing propaganda pieces, opposition to the project grew, especially among conservatives. In 1939, after heated debate, Congress abolished the project. A detailed, highly readable account of the Federal Theatre Project can be found in Flanagan's Arena (1940).

The Federal Theatre Project (ftp) was one of five public works programs for artists and writers created in 1935 by the New Deal Works Progress Administration (wpa). This was the first time the federal government subsidized the arts on such a vast scale. The ftp's purpose was twofold: to provide relief work for theatrical artists that utilized their talents and to make their work widely available to ordinary Americans, thus democratizing "high culture."

The ftp was the most controversial and short-lived of the wpa's arts projects. Hallie Flanagan, former head of Vassar College's Experimental Theater, served as director and shaped the ftp into a forum for experimental theater committed to creating public awareness of contemporary issues. They produced a range of plays from Shakespeare to Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here and T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. Sixteen black theater units were established. Their most notable production, staged in Harlem, was an all-black version of Macbeth set in Haiti. The ftp also produced the "Living Newspaper," dramatizations combining newsreel, radio, and stage techniques that focused on contemporary social issues, such as slums and public utilities. The ftp employed actors, playwrights, directors, producers, composers, and technicians, including such notables as Orson Welles, Arthur Miller, John Huston, E. G. Marshall, and John Houseman.

The ftp gave many Americans their first opportunity to attend live theater. It sent companies on tour to smaller cities and also staged children's plays, puppet shows, radio dramas, and circuses. About 30 million people attended these productions in the four years of the ftp's existence.

In the late 1930s, the ftp came under attack by the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was conducting a larger investigation into propaganda activities. The ftp was accused of communist leanings and of providing a forum for New Deal propaganda. Congress abolished the ftp in 1939 because of this controversy and as part of a general abandonment of the New Deal.

See also New Deal.

Poster for Festival of American Dance, Los Angeles Federal Theatre Project, WPA, 1937.

WPA Federal Theater Project in New York: Negro Theatre Unit: "Macbeth", ca. 1935.

The Federal Theatre Project (FTP) was a New Deal project to fund theatre and other live artistic performances in the United States during the Great Depression. It was one of five Federal One projects sponsored by the Works Projects Administration (WPA). The FTP's primary goal was employment of out-of-work artists, writers, and directors, with the secondary aim of entertaining poor families and creating relevant art.

Background

The FTP was established August 27, 1935 after a legislative and administrative prologue. Hallie Flanagan, a theater professor at Vassar, was chosen by WPA head Harry Hopkins to lead the FTP. She was given the daunting task of building a national theater program to employ thousands of unemployed artists in as little time as possible. Hopkins added to the difficulty of her job by promising the FTP would be "free, adult, and uncensored." At the time, this statement appeared to FTP directors as a green light to all FTP projects, regardless of their political or social content. Soon, however it would come back to haunt Hopkins, Flanagan and the FTP as a whole.

Living Newspapers were plays written by teams of researchers-turned-playwrights. These men and women clipped articles from newspapers about current events, often hot button issues like farm policy, syphilis testing, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and housing inequity. These newspaper clippings were adapted into plays intended to inform audiences, often with progressive or left-wing themes. Triple-A Plowed Under, for instance, attacked the U.S. Supreme Court for killing an aid agency for farmers. These politically-themed plays quickly drew criticism from members of Congress.

Although the undisguised political invective in the Living Newspapers sparked controversy, they also proved popular with audiences. As an art form, the Living Newspaper is perhaps the FTP's most well-known work.

Problems with the FTP and Congress intensified when the State Department objected to the first Living Newspaper, Ethiopia, about Haile Selassie and his nation's struggles against Benito Mussolini's invading Italian forces. The U.S. government soon mandated that the FTP, a federal government agency, could not depict foreign heads of state on the stage, for fear of diplomatic backlash. Playwright and director Elmer Rice, head of the New York office of the FTP, resigned in protest.

Many of the notable artists of the time participated in the FTP, including Susan Glaspell who served as Midwest Bureau Director. The legacy of the FTP can also be found in a new generation of theater artists whose careers began with the FTP. Arthur Miller, Orson Welles, John Houseman, Martin Ritt, Elia Kazan, Joseph Losey, Marc Blitzstein, Arthur Arent and Abe Feder all became established, in part, through their work in the FTP. Blitzstein, Houseman and Welles collaborated on the controversial FTP production of The Cradle Will Rock.

The FTP was the most expensive of the Federal One projects, consuming 29.1 percent of Federal One's budget. (However, this budget was less than three-fourths of one percent of the total WPA budget.)

On June 30, 1939, the FTP was ended when its funding was canceled, largely attributed to strong Congressional objections to the overtly left-wing political tones of many FTP productions.

See also

Theatre portal

A lightly fictionalized version of the FTP's story is presented in the 1999 film "Cradle Will Rock".

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Federal Theater Project

• American Memory - The New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939
• Triple A Plowed Under Full text plus recreation-for-radio production of this Federal Theater Project drama from American Studies at the University of Virginia
• Ponce, Pedro, "An Hour Upon the Stage: The Brief Life of Federal Theatre," Humanities, July/August 2003
• GMU Special Collection & Archives: Federal Theatre Project Playscript and Radioscript Collection
• Federal Theatre Project Poster, Costume, and Set Design Slide Collection - online images from George Mason University Library.
• Living New Deal Project, California
• Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Federal Theater Project

v • d • e Works Progress Administration Federal One Federal Art Project · Federal Music Project · Federal Theatre Project · Federal Writers' Project · Historical Records Survey

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)