Federal Theatre Project

Federal Theatre Project. 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).