The Federal Theatre Project

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The Federal Theatre Project
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Key Concepts

• The Federal Theatre Project
• Hallie Flanagan
• Govt. Funding of the Arts
• Negro Units and their Drama
• Rose McClendon
• Voodoo Macbeth
• Big White Fog
• Living Newspapers
• Liberty Deferred

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Federal Theatre Project

• Established in 1935 under FDRs New Deal
• Govt. paid African American and other artists to
  stage plays about ethnic experiences
• Designed to help artists get on their feet after
  crash of 1929
• Opened on Aug. 27, 1935 and ran until June 30,
  1939

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Federal Theatre Project

• Employed 10,000 artists in 40 states
• 50 were actors
• Hallie Flanagan chosen to be in charge of all
  units of the FTP
• Wanted to develop theatre and arts projects that
  were conscious of changes that needed to be made
  to social order

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Types of FTP plays

• New plays
• Classical plays
• Formerly produced on Broadway
• Modern foreign plays
• Stock plays
• Revues and musical comedies
• Vaudeville
• Dance
• Early Americana
• Puppetry and marionette

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Ethnic Units

• Yiddish, Irish, Spanish, African-American
  German
• Negro Units produced the work of exceptional
  playwrights like Willis Richardson Langston
  Hughes
• 22 Negro Units were disbursed throughout the
  country
• Units were often extensions of existing companies
  formed during H.R

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Rose McClendon

• Well-known black actresses of the 1920s and 1930s
  
• Founded Federal Negro Theater
• Most famous Negro Unit
• Housed in Lafayette Theatre
• Prior to FTP established Harlem Experimental
  Theatre
• Suggested that a White director should be placed
  in charge of New York Negro unit to give it
  credibility
• Co-Director of Harlem unit with John Houseman and
  Orson Welles
• Produced Voodoo Macbeth

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Voodoo Macbeth

• Opened on April 14, 1936
• Re-adaptation of the Shakespeare classic set in
  Haiti
• Audiences enjoyed the play so much that they
  applauded for fifteen minutes after the
  performances regularly
• Macbeth launched the meteoric directing career of
  Orson Welles, not yet 21
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vQZLrqJka-EU

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Authenticity Debate

• If I have one thing to say to Negroes who work,
  or have the ambition to work, in any field of
  artistic expression, it is this Be yourselves!
  Don't reach for our stuff which we call good!
  Make your stuff and your good. We look around
  with accustomed eyes at somewhat jaded
  landscapes, at least too familiar, while to you
  life ought to be as green and as deep, as the
  sea! There ought to be a Negro play written by a
  Negro that no white could ever have conceived or
  executed.
• (Quoted in Taylor, Zanthe. "Singing for Their
  Supper," Theatre vol 27, pp.45)

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Negro Unit Types of Theatre

• Popular Commercial Plays
• Developed for commercial theatres and general
  audiences
• Swing Mikado / Voodoo Macbeth
• Folk Dramas
• Plays about African American folk life and
  customs
• All Gods Chillun Got Wings by Eugene ONeill.
• Historical Dramas
• based around historical black characters
• Go Down Moses about Harriet Tubman or Natural Man
  about the railroad man John Henry.
• Social Realist Plays
• Dramas that addressed social issues with dramatic
  characters and circumstances.
• Big White Fog
• Addresses issues of social justice, housing, and
  employment for the underclass
• Living Newspapers

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Living Newspapers

• Documentary production based on news, information
  and contemporary social problems
• Expressed concern for the underclass, urged
  unions, vocalized distrust of capitalism
• Political nature led to downfall of FTP

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Living Newspapers

• Offstage narrator functioned as voice of the
  people
• One Third of a Nation
• FDR - "one-third of a nation" was "ill-housed,
  ill-clad, and ill-nourished."

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African American Living Newspapers

• Stars and Bars / Liberty Deferred
• Neither actually performed
• Stars and Bars
• Commented upon the status of blacks in Hartford,
  Connecticut
• Landing of the Amistad slave ship
• Condition of the urban slums
• Difficulty of finding housing within the city
• Allegorical characters called Tuberculosis,
  Syphilis, etc.

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African American Living Newspapers

• Liberty Deferred
• Two couples, one white and one black, reflect
  upon the history of African Americans in the
  United States
• Jim Crow explains how his power operates in both
  the north and the south
• Lynchotopia is in the play as a destination for
  lynching victims.

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Closing of FTP

• June 30, 1939, FTP was shut down by an act of
  congress
• Budget from the FTP simply distributed to other
  projects
• Ironically did not save the government any money
• Viewed by opponents as a Communist program
• Many blacks who participated in the Negro Units
  could not find any jobs in the theater

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• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vGnFiEBk1rBs