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Accompanying DVD contains the chapters: Who killed the Federal Theatre? -- Innovations: a selection of interviews -- Art and politics: a selection of interviews -- Selection of Federal Theatre posters -- Selection of Federal Theatre photographs.
The Federal Theatre Project, a 1930s relief project of the Roosevelt administration, brought more theatre to more people in every corner of America that at any time in U.S. history. The Project had units in every region of the country, including groundbreaking African American troupes, and staged productions from daring dramas like The Voodoo Macbeth, Waiting for Lefty, and The Cradle Will Rock, to musicals, vaudeville, and puppet shows. It was cancelled in a firestorm of controversy that gave birth to the damning question: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?"--Book jacket. | The book includes interviews with such Federal Theatre actors, playwrights, directors, designers, producers, and dancers as Arthur Miller, Studs Terkel, Jules Dassin, Katherine Dunham, Rosetta Lenoire, John Houseman, and many others. | The DVD contains the PBS special "Who killed the Federal Theatre?", plus a selection of interviews, posters and photographs.
This 2003 book provides a detailed examination of the operations of the US Federal Theatre Project in the decade of the 1930s.
The subject of Swortzell's book is a selection of plays created by the Children's Theatre units of the Federal Theatre Project. . . . Most of the six plays in Swortzell's anthology resonate with political messages integral to the post-Depression, post-World War I era. . . . Though some of the scripts, like Chorpenning's A Letter to Santa Clause, which is an indictment of war, and Yasha Frank's Pinocchio, which celebrates the rewards of a virtuous life, hammer away at theme to the point of becoming tedious, the plays written and performed during this brief heydey in the history of children's theatre reveal just how far the genre could move beyond the narrow focus and prescribed subjects which once defined its boundaries. Children's Literature Association Quarterly The plays published here were originally commissioned by the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) of the Works Progress Administration. Editor Lowell Swortzell has selected six plays representative of the reportory of the children's theatre productions of the FTP and reprinted them in their entirety. The plays, whether original scripts or adaptations of fairy tales and folklore, emphasized both educational and entertainment value. The plays are preceded by an extensive introduction detailing the history and goals of the children's theatre unit. The plays are: Horse Play by Dorothy Hailparn, a comedy from the Negro Unit of New York City; Flight by Oscar Saul and Louis Lantz, a documentary play in the style of the Living Newspaper; The Boiled Eggs by Rught Fenisong, a comedy form the Marionette Unit of New York City; The Revolt of the Beavers by Oscar Saul and Louis Lantz, a controversial fable from Broadway; A Letter to Santa Claus by Charlotte Chorpenning, an anti-war Christmas pantomine produced as a gift to the children of Chicago; and Pinocchio, a popular adaptation first produced in Los Angeles, then transferred to Broadway.
In the 1930s, the Work Progress Administration funded a massive Federal Theatre Project in America's major urban centres, presenting hundreds of productions, some of the most popular and memorable of which were produced in the highly controversial and avant garde 'Negro Units'. This experiment in government-supported culture brought to the forefront one of the central problems in American democratic culture - the representation of racial difference. Those in the profession quickly discovered inescapable ideological responsibilities attending any sort of show, whether apparently entertaining or political in nature. Exploring the liberal idealism of the thirties and the critical debates in black journals over the role of an African American theatre, Fraden also looks at the obstacles facing black playwrights, audiences, and actors in a changing milieu.
A history of the WPA's Federal Theater Project in the 1930s traces the transformation of the Roosevelt administration relief effort into a platform for some of performing art's most inventive and controversial achievements.
The Living Newspaper is invariably associated in the United States with the progressive aspects of New Deal culture, and particularly with the innovative work of the Federal Theatre Project (1935-39). The Living Newspapers in this volume treat the history of labor in the courts (Injunction Granted), medical treatment (Medicine Show), blacks in America (Liberty Deferred), and provide documentation of the Highlights of 1935. Liberty Deferred and Other Living Newspapers is a bold, penetrating investigation of a revolutionary form of theatre.