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The
Federal Theatre Project
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INTRODUCTION
During the late 1920's and early 1930's, an
important theatrical movement developed: The Workers' Theatre
Movement (clicking here
will take you to a page describing significant aspects
of that movement.). It eventually diminished in importance around
the middle of the 1930's, and one of the developments aiding
the decline of the Workers' Theatre Movement, by using many
of its methods and theatrical devices, was the formation of
the Federal Theatre Project. Once the government took on the
task of putting people to work producing theatre, it was able,
in part, to subsume the movement. The Federal Theatre Project
attempted to put unemployed theatre workers back to work (popular
radio and talking movies has virtually replaced vaudeville as
America's favorite forms of entertainment, and most vaudevillians
saw their jobs disappear); the FTP tried, further, to present
theatre that was relevant--socially and politically, was regional--reflected
its local area, and had popular prices--many of the shows were
free. Most of its famous productions, although not all of them,
came out of New York City: New York had a classical unit, Negro
unit, and units performing vaudeville, children’s plays, puppet
shows, caravan productions, and the new plays unit. The
Federal Theatre Project was the only fully government-sponsored
theatre ever in the United States.
BACKGROUND
The decade of the 1920s was an era of apparently
prosperous but in fact endangered economy; weaknesses in the
agricultural system and the dependence on an industrial urban
machine lead to the stock-market crash and Great Depression
in October 1929. By winter 1930-31, 4 million were unemployed;
by March 1931, 8 million. Herbert Hoover did apparently little,
thinking prosperity was just around the corner. By 1932, when
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected, the national income was
half that of 1929; there were 12 million unemployed (one of
four). Within two weeks of his inauguration, in 1933, FDR reopened
three-fourths of the Federal Reserve Banks and continued to
try to fix the economy.
Many called FDR's administration "the Alphabetical
Administration"--it was often ridiculed because it seemed
to have so many different organizations designated by different
groups of letters. For instance, the C. C. C., the Civilian
Conservation Corps, started in 1933 and found jobs for over
250,000 men. Further, The National Recovery Administration,
or N.R.A., also started in 1933 and put 2 million people to
work in forest preservation. The Federal Emergency Relief Act,
or F. E. R. A., started in 1933, headed by Harry
Hopkins, who was a friend and former campaign manager of
FDR, put $500 million back into circulation. By
1933 the economy had recovered a bit, but reforms quickened
the recovery even more. One of those reforms was the W.P.A.
The
W. P. A., or Works Progress Administration,
was started in 1935 to give jobs to unemployed people in their
areas of skill; this was also headed by Harry Hopkins.
There were four arts projects formed for white-collar
workers: Art,
Music, Writers,
and Theatre. The four arts projects spent less than 3/4 of 1
percent of the total WPA budget, yet were blamed for being un-democratic
and wasteful. Most blame fell on the Federal
Theatre Project [this
link takes you to the American Memory, New Deal Collection
page at the Library of Congress]--formed August 27, 1935, with
its first production in 1936, it remained in existence until
1939. It employed 10,000 people per year on average; up to 12,000
people at its highest. The Federal
Theatre Project [this
link takes you to an article (also at the Library of Congress)
on the FTP by Dr. Lorraine Brown of George Mason University,
one of the two people responsible for discovering the FTP files
in an airplane hanger in Baltimore) gave 1200 productions of
at least 850 major works and of 309 new plays (29 new musicals)
to an audience estimated at 25 million people in 40 states.
(You can see a number of photos of FTP productions by going
here.)
DEVELOPMENT OF THE FEDERAL THEATRE PROJECT
Hopkins didn’t want just a relief project, though
that was important. He turned to Hallie
Flanagan [this
link takes you to the Library of Congress site] (1898-1969),
who was a teacher and director at Grinnell College in Iowa.
She had been a student in George
P. Baker’s famous Workshop 47 class at Harvard; when Hopkins
hired Flanagan, she was running the experimental theatre at
Vassar College in New York. Hopkins hired Flanagan
[this
link takes you to the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at New
York City's Public Library at Lincoln Center] to be the head
of the Federal Theatre Project, which was divided into five
areas--New York City, the East, the South, the Midwest, and
the West. Flanagan had been influenced
by European theatre, German Theatre and, American workers’ theatre.
The Communist revolution had occurred in Russia in 1918 and
many Europeans came to the U.S.; many were Communists.
The Federal Theatre Project also had units in
Florida, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Albuquerque,
and many others all around the country, and eventually grossed
over $2 million.
THE FEDERAL THEATRE PROJECT'S CONTROVERSIES
Despite all of its benefits, the F. T. P. was
plagued by censorship, political problems, and inefficiency.
The problems began to appear almost immediately:
the FTP experimented with a theatre form that Flanagan had used
at Vassar, called "the
living newspaper" (click here
for a list of available photos) --montage documentaries, carefully
researched, with clear points of view, using the Epic
theatre techniques of Piscator
and Meyerhold’s
constructivist techniques. Most Living Newspapers used a common
man as their unifying character, whose curiosity about the current
problem has been aroused. The character is then led through
a background of the problem, which clarifies the issue for the
audience. The FTP’s first Living Newspaper, planned for production
in January 1936 but never produced, was called Ethiopia.
The show depicted Haile Salassie, leader of Ethiopia. Washington
immediately ordered that no current ministers or heads of state
could be represented in the Federal Theatre Project plays, a
policy that was eventually modified to allow for actual quotes,
but still no depictions of real heads of state were allowed.
Playwright Elmer
Rice, who had taken the position as director of the New
York City project, resigned over what he thought was censorship.
The incident was highly publicized (Flanagan said later that
the publicity may have kept the FTP as free from censorship
as it was). Other living newspapers followed, however, and became
what some have called one of two unique American contributions
to world theatre (the other being the musical):
Triple-A
Plowed Under (1936) dealing with Agricultural
Administration Act, which paid farmers to ruin their own crops;
One
Third of a Nation (1938), based on a pledge Roosevelt
made in his second inaugural address to feed and house the nation;
Power
(1937), about monopolies of power companies and about
the Tennessee Valley Authority;
and Spirochete
(1937), about the problem of Syphilis.
THE "NEGRO UNITS"
The "Negro Units" of the Federal Theatre
Project were headed by Rose McClendon, a well-known black actress,
and John
Houseman, a theatre producer who was able to get actor/director
Orson
Welles to work with the unit. (10 percent of the Federal
Theatre Project budget could be used to pay non-relief workers).
There were Negro units in many cities, but the most notorious
was New York’s: it produced a Swing Mikado, a swing version
of the Gilbert and Sullivan show, Negro spokesman and author
W.
E. B. DuBois’s Haiti, and, perhaps the most famous,
the Voodoo
Macbeth, for which Welles brought in actual "witch
doctors" from the Caribbean (click here
for some photos and here
for even more photos and other fascinating material).
SOCIALLY SIGNIFICANT PLAYS
It
Can’t Happen Here, a dramatization of Sinclair Lewis’s
novel, opened on October 27, 1936, in 17 different locations
simultaneously around the United States, including one black
production. The show dealt with an imaginary fascist takeover
in the United States; Flanagan wanted lots of publicity with
this show and doing so many productions at the same time did
the trick.
The
Cradle Will Rock was rehearsed by Welles’s and Houseman’s
FTP unit to be produced in June of 1937.
Marc
Blitzstein wrote this show, which is more like an opera
than anything else, about Larry Foreman, a worker in Steeltown
(played in the original production by Howard
da Silva), which is run by the boss, Mister Mister (played
in the original production by Will
Geer -- Grandpa in "The Waltons").
The show clearly had left-wing and unionist
sympathies (Foreman ends the show with a song about "onions"
taking over the town and the country), and has become legendary
as an example of a "censored" show. Shortly before
the show was to open, FTP officials in Washington announced
that no productions would open until after July 1, 1937, the
beginning of the new fiscal year. John Houseman writes in his
book Runthrough about the circumstances
surrounding the opening of the show.
Photo:
The Cradle Will Rock in rehearsal
All the performers had been enjoined
not to perform on stage for the production when it opened on
July 14, 1937. The cast and crew left their government-owned
theatre and walked 20 blocks to another theatre, with the audience
following. No one knew what to expect; when they got there Blitzstein
himself was at the piano and started playing the introduction
music. One of the non-professional performers, Olive Stanton,
who played the part of Moll, the prostitute, stood up in the
audience, and began singing her part. All the other performers,
in turn, stood up for their parts. Thus the "oratorio"
version of the show was born. Apparently, Welles had designed
some intricate scenery, which ended up never being used. Welles
and Houseman left the FTP shortly after that, and formed the
Mercury Theatre (later to become famous for their controversial
War of the Worlds radio broadcast, which had put
much of the country in a panic), performed Cradle on
Sundays, and later took the show to Broadway.
Revolt
of the Beavers. The
Federal Theatre Project also had active Children's Theatre units;
they were not immune to criticism, either. One of the most infamous
children's plays was Revolt of the Beavers --
criticized for its socialistic viewpoint (click the image or
title above to see more information).
Sing
for your Supper was the
production that became the most visibly and publicly condemned
by Congress, which eventually led to the closing of the Federal
Theatre Project. The show opened in the spring of 1939 (the
opening date is disputed in various sources), after eighteen
months of rehearsal. (Brooks Atkinson's review of the show in
the New York Times was entitled, "Federal
Theatre's 'Sing For Your Supper' Officially Concludes Rehearsal
Period" [25 April 1939, 18:6]).
The long rehearsal period was a caused by a
number of factors and led to even further condemnation by a
Congress determined to close the FTP down: actors would be seen
by agents and get hired for other shows; the FTP then had to
find other performers and rehearse with them; and in the meantime
other performers would find other jobs. Adding this to the red
tape involved in getting funding and approval for any changes,
it is remarkable that the show went up at all.
Supper closed on
the last day of the FTP’s existence, June 30, 1939. It was a
topical revue about what the performers were doing--they were
indeed singing for their supper, which would be paid for by
the federal government.
THE DEMISE
OF FEDERAL THEATRE PROJECT
Partly because of its 18-month-long
rehearsal time, and partly because of long-held suspicions that
the FTP was fraught with Communists and fellow travelers, Congress
shut it down. Republican member of Congress, Martin
Dies, became the head of a new committee, the House
Un-American Activities Committee, charged to find those
in and out of government participating in un-American Activities
(this committee would, of course, continue through the forties
and into the ‘50s, until it was eventually stifled by the negative
publicity of Congress-member Joseph
McCarthy). Dies deplored the FTP’s inefficiency, extravagance,
and political satire, along with its lewdness, waste, and leftism,
calling it a propaganda machine.
Members of this committee certainly didn’t
know much about theatre: when Flanagan mentioned, during testimony,
the name of Christopher
Marlowe, one member of Congress asked whether Marlowe was
a Communist. Despite their ignorance (my editorial: or perhaps
because of it), Congress removed all funds from FTP projects.
The other three Arts Projects--Music, Art, and Writing--continued
to be funded by Congress until 1941.
The Federal Theatre Project had
brought theatre to millions who had never seen theatre before,
it employed millions of people, it introduced European epic theatre
and Living Newspaper theatre techniques to the United States,
and hence could be seen as a great success. In fact, it is a unique
development in the American theatre, whose implications are still
not clear. At the very least, it has shown the debilitating effects
that can occur in the United States when politicians and bureaucrats
have ultimate control over what should be an artistic endeavor.
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