Federal Theatre Project

Identification Federal make-work project for actors and dramatists that was part of the Works Progress Administration

Date Established on April 8, 1935

The Federal Theatre Project changed the face of twentieth century American theater, first by decentralizing professional theater from urban centers to communities across the country. It employed thirteen thousand out-of-work artists in thirty-one states; encouraged diversity and experimentation in plays and productions; established quality professional theater with noncommercial interests; recognized theater of, by, and for the people, including previously marginalized groups such as ethnic minorities and children; and trained thousands of theater artists who went on to create imaginative, provocative theater and train others who followed.

In the wake of the Great Depression more than fifteen million Americans, including thousands of theater artists, found themselves out of work. By 1934, only five, of the previously seventy-five, legitimate theaters in New York City were open. In addition, talking films took over opera houses and theaters across the country, putting touring, summer stock, and vaudeville performers, designers, and technicians, as well as theater orchestras, out of work. Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to Congress in an attempt to put people to work. When the legislation passed, Harry Hopkins, a close Roosevelt aide and head of the WPA, sought out Hallie Flanagan, a former college professor from Vassar College, to head the theater division because he wanted someone who could recognize the benefits as artistic, not commercial. Although she was reluctant, Hopkins promised her a “free, adult, and uncensored” theater. She took office in August, 1935.

Getting Organized

Flanagan had toured Europe on a Guggenheim Fellowship and was impressed with the diversity and artistic integrity of the European theaters. She viewed her appointment as an opportunity to create a living theater that responded to a changing world. Even though her nearly $7 million budget was a small fraction of the $5 billion available, Flanagan set about her task, which she saw as the challenge of providing work to the unemployed while still maintaining high artistic standards.

Flanagan started by hiring twelve thousand people and appointing a deputy national director, to oversee administrative issues, and an assistant director, to handle royalties and equipment. She also established seven geographic areas of concentration, each with its own director, which included three city centers—New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—and four large regions—East, West, Midwest, and South. All ten directors met regularly to discuss plays, policies, and ways to spread theater far and wide. Hopkins and Flanagan agreed not to compete with commercial theater; thus, Flanagan stressed the creation of alternative theater forms such as marionette, dance, and caravan as well as theater for children, high schools, and minorities.

Each region had various “units,” depending upon available talent and the cultural make-up of its community. For example, there was a Spanish unit in Miami, a Yiddish unit in New York, and other ethnic groups in various areas who presented plays in their native languages. African American and children’s theater units sprang up in several regions, and there were also units that focused on a particular type of performance, such as classical plays, vaudeville, and circus acts. Flanagan’s interest in developing new drama spread into a variety of avenues, including the Living Newspaper, experimental theater, and African American theater as well as imaginative productions of classic plays. Most famous of these productions were Orson Welles’s and John Houseman’s voodoo Macbeth, with a completely African Americans cast, and their modern-clothed production of Julius Caesar.

Federal Theatre troupes played in lodge halls, high school gymnasiums, church basements, old barns, abandoned store buildings, showboats, parks, and even on sidewalks and in makeshift tents. Most Federal Theatre Project productions were free or charged a nominal admission fee to help defray production costs. Flanagan envisioned a federation of theaters across the country answering the needs of their own unique communities. She held to her conviction that art should reflect the United States in all its diversity and not be the sole property of any one interest group.

In its short life, the Federal Theatre Project employed more than ten thousand artists per year, and gave more than sixty thousand performances of more than twelve hundred plays, which included nearly nine hundred major works and more than three hundred original plays, to an audience estimated at thirty million in forty states. A large percentage of the audience had never before seen a live theater performance. By 1939, the U.S. government had spent more than $45 million to pay the salaries of playwrights, directors, actors, designers, and technicians to produce plays, even though the pay was less than $25 a week.

The Demise of the Federal Theatre Project

Despite its extraordinary accomplishments, the Federal Theatre Project had many enemies. Because some of the plays took critical stances on current political issues, they were considered “leftist” and came under intense scrutiny by conservatives in Congress and the print media. In 1939, the controversy over the Federal Theatre Project came to a head, gaining the attention of Martin Dies, Jr., the chair of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, who seized the opportunity to attack the Roosevelt administration and identified the Federal Theatre Project as part of the New Deal’s propaganda machine and an arm of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Barred from making public comment in her own defense by the WPA administration, Flanagan was convicted in the court of public opinion before the Dies committee initiated its hearings. As a result, the House passed the Relief Bill for 1939-1940, calling for drastic changes in the WPA program that included severe cuts to arts funding, eliminating the theater project altogether, and requiring loyalty oaths intended to suppress political radicals.

Impact

In the beginning, the commercial theater scoffed at the idea of a government-funded theater employing out-of-work artists, but within a few years, most critics hailed it as the biggest hit-producing enterprise in New York. The Federal Theatre Project launched the careers of many well-known performers, such as Joseph Cotten and Will Geer; writers, such as Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, and Mary Chase; directors; designers; and technicians who influenced and inspired future generations.

The Living Newspaper was seen at the time as the most significant contribution of the Federal Theatre Project because it presented an original form for plays, incorporating current events and actual content of political speeches and/or newspaper reports into a multimedia performance with movement, amplified sound, and special lighting effects. It was lively, timely, entertaining, and labeled as dangerous by Federal Theatre Project adversaries, in response to which Flanagan asserted that good theater is, by its nature, dangerous.

The lasting influence of the Federal Theatre Project is undeniable. Theatrical trends that became commonplace in the American theater can trace their roots directly to the seeds planted by the Federal Theatre Project. During the 1940’s, the regional theater movement took hold, creating high-quality professional theaters across the country, and the outdoor theater movement begun by Paul Green with The Lost Colony in 1937 gave rise to a movement of historical dramas and other outdoor productions. The Federal Theatre Project’s fostering of new and uniquely American drama encouraged a whole generation of playwrights to explore its own voice; the project included plays by women, African Americans, Latinos, and other ethnic groups. Experimentation in scenic, lighting, costume, and sound design created new paths for theatrical designers and their imaginations. Flanagan always maintained that theater belonged to everyone, not as a luxury, but as a necessity.

Bibliography

Buttitta, Tony, and Barry Witham. Uncle Sam Presents: A Memoir of the Federal Theatre 1935-1939. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. Firsthand account of Buttitta and his work with the Federal Theatre in New York, first as a reporter for the Federal Theatre Magazine and later as a press agent for several productions.

Flanagan, Hallie. Arena. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1940. Flanagan’s complete, firsthand account of her work as head of the Federal Theatre Project; indispensable source for understanding the project from the inside.

Fraden, Rena. Blueprints for a Black Federal Theatre, 1935-1939. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Presents the historical context of the African American units of the Federal Theatre Project while also exploring the problems in writing plays that tore down old stereotypes and redefined drama from an African American viewpoint.

Kazacoff, George. Dangerous Theatre: The Federal Theatre Project as a Forum for New Plays. New York: Peter Lang, 1989. Dedicated to exploring the organization’s role in creating plays and redefining American drama throughout the country; limits coverage to “legitimate,” professionally produced plays and musicals presented originally to American audiences and does not include the Living Newspaper, African American plays, or other forms of performances, such as pageants, puppetry, revivals, and so forth.

Mathews, Jane DeHart. The Federal Theatre, 1935-1939: Plays, Relief, and Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967. Focuses on the nature of the Federal Theatre as a national institution, namely its people and ideas, the forces that shaped it, problems it encountered, and its contributions to the country.

Schwartz, Bonnie. Voices from the Federal Theatre. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. Contains firsthand accounts by prominent actors, producers, writers, and variety artists of the Federal Theatre; includes collection of photographs and a DVD containing additional photographs from productions and of Federal Theatre Project posters, interviews with key players, and a documentary film entitled Who Killed the Federal Theatre?

Whitman, Willson. Bread and Circuses: A Study of Federal Theatre. New York: Oxford University Press, 1937. The first book written about the project; gives an overview of the development of the Federal Theatre in the midst of its tenure. Perhaps most valuable are the bibliography, which chronicles the important periodical articles of the day concerning the Federal Theatre, and the appendix of plays produced across the country.

Witham, Barry B. The Federal Theatre Project: A Case Study. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Witham presents an excellent overview of the Federal Theatre Project that includes coverage of the bus tours, Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Living Newspaper; particular emphasis on the Seattle African American unit and the production of See How They Run.