Federal Theatre Project
National director Hallie Flanagan shaped the FTP into a federation of regional theaters that created relevant art, encouraged experimentation in new forms and techniques, and made it possible for millions of Americans to see live theatre for the first time.
[2][3] One month before the project's end, drama critic Brooks Atkinson summarized: "Although the Federal Theatre is far from perfect, it has kept an average of ten thousand people employed on work that has helped to lift the dead weight from the lives of millions of Americans.
[5]: 7 Roosevelt and Hopkins selected her despite considerable pressure to choose someone from the commercial theatre industry; they believed the project should be led by someone with academic credentials and a national perspective.
The far reaching purpose is the establishment of theatres so vital to community life that they will continue to function after the program of this Federal Project is completed.
[8]Within a year the Federal Theatre Project employed 15,000 men and women,[9]: 174 paying them $23.86 a week while the Actors Equity Association's minimum was $40.00.
[11] During its nearly four years of existence 30 million people attended FTP productions in more than 200 theaters nationwide[9]: 174 — renting many that had been shuttered — as well as parks, schools, churches, clubs, factories, hospitals and closed-off streets.
[5]: 432 Because the Federal Theatre was created to employ and train people, not to generate revenue, no provision was made for the receipt of money when the project began.
[2]: 40 "In any consideration of the cost of the Federal Theatre," Flanagan wrote, "it should be borne in mind that the funds were allotted, according to the terms of the Relief Act of 1935, to pay wages to unemployed people.
[5]: 434–436 Many of the notable artists of the time participated in the Federal Theatre Project, including Susan Glaspell who served as Midwest bureau director.
These men and women clipped articles from newspapers about current events, often hot button issues like farm policy, syphilis (spirochete) infection, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and housing inequity.
Problems with the Federal Theatre Project 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 NTU had additional offices in Hartford, Boston, Salem, Newark, and Philadelphia in the East; Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles in the West; Cleveland, Detroit, Peoria, and Chicago in the Midwest; and Raleigh, Atlanta, Birmingham, and New Orleans in the South.
The most popular production was the third, which came to be called the Voodoo Macbeth (1936), director Orson Welles's adaptation of Shakespeare's play set on a mythical island suggesting the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe.
[2] The FTP overtly sought out relationships with the African American community including Carter Woodson of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, as well as Walter White of the NAACP.
[1] This argument from McClendon received support from Edna Thomas, Harry Edwards, Carlton Moss, Abraham Hale Jr., Augusta Smith and Dick Campbell.
For three years the radio division of the Federal Theatre Project presented an average of 3,000 programs annually on commercial stations and the NBC, Mutual and CBS networks.
Asked to expand the program to encompass the entire WPA, the radio division produced No Help Wanted, a dramatization by William N. Robson with music by Leith Stevens.
Flanagan testified that the FTP was pro-American insofar as the work celebrated the constitutional freedoms of speech and expression to address the relevant and pressing concerns of its citizens.
Although the overall financial cost of the FTP was minuscule in the grand scheme of the WPA's budget, Congress determined that the average American did not consider theater a viable recipient of their tax dollars.
[5]: 432–433 The Living Newspapers productions that drew criticism were Injunction Granted, a history of American labor relations; One-Third of a Nation, about housing conditions in New York; Power,[5]: 433 about energy from the consumer's point of view;[5]: 184–185 and Triple A Plowed Under, on farming problems in America.
[5]: 434 Dramas criticized by Congress were American Holiday, about a small-town murder trial; Around the Corner, a Depression-era comedy; Chalk Dust, about an urban high school; Class of '29, the Depression years as seen through young college graduates; Created Equal, a review of American life since colonial times; It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis's parable of democracy and dictatorship; No More Peace, Ernst Toller's satire on dictatorships; Professor Mamlock, about Nazi persecution of Jews; Prologue to Glory, about the early life of Abraham Lincoln; The Sun and I, about Joseph in Egypt; and Woman of Destiny, about a female President who works for peace.
[5]: 433 Negro Theatre Unit productions that drew criticism were The Case of Philip Lawrence, a portrait of life in Harlem; Did Adam Sin?, a review of black folklore with music; and Haiti, a play about Toussaint Louverture.
[5]: 433 Also criticized for their content were the dance dramas Candide, from Voltaire; How Long Brethren, featuring songs by future Guggenheim Fellowship recipient Lawrence Gellert; and Trojan Incident, a translation of Euripides with a prologue from Homer.
[5]: 433 The musical Sing for Your Supper also met with Congressional criticism, although its patriotic finale, "Ballad for Americans", was chosen as the theme song of the 1940 Republican National Convention.
[5]: 433 A fictionalized view of the Federal Theatre Project is presented in the 1999 film Cradle Will Rock, in which Cherry Jones portrays Hallie Flanagan.
