The Federal Theatre Project (FTP) was a New Deal

New Deal

The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

 project to fund theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 and other live artistic performances in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 during the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. It was one of five Federal One

Federal One

Federal Project Number One was the collective name for a group of projects under the Work Projects Administration, a New Deal program in the United States. The five elements of the program were:*Mathematical Tables Project*Harry Hopkins-External links:...

 projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administration

Works Progress Administration

The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...

 (WPA). The FTP's primary goal was employment of out-of-work artists, writers, and directors, with the secondary aim of entertaining poor families and creating relevant art.

Background

The FTP was established August 27, 1935, after a legislative and administrative prologue. Hallie Flanagan

Hallie Flanagan

Hallie Flanagan was an American theatrical producer and director, playwright, and author, best known as director of the Federal Theatre Project, a part of the Works Progress Administration .-Background:...

, a theater professor at Vassar

Vassar College

Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...

, was chosen by WPA head Harry Hopkins

Harry Hopkins

Harry Lloyd Hopkins was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest advisers. He was one of the architects of the New Deal, especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration , which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country...

 to lead the FTP. She was given the daunting task of building a national theater program to employ thousands of unemployed artists in as little time as possible. Hopkins added to the difficulty of her job by promising the FTP would be "free, adult, and uncensored." At the time, this statement appeared to FTP directors as a green light to all FTP projects, regardless of their political or social content. Soon, however it would come back to haunt Hopkins, Flanagan and the FTP as a whole.
Living Newspaper

Living Newspaper

Living Newspaper is a term for a theatrical form presenting factual information on current events to a popular audience. Historically, Living Newspapers have also urged social action and reacted against naturalistic and realistic theatrical conventions in favor of the more direct, experimental...

s were plays written by teams of researchers-turned-playwrights. These men and women clipped articles from newspapers about current events, often hot button issues like farm

Farm

A farm is an area of land, or, for aquaculture, lake, river or sea, including various structures, devoted primarily to the practice of producing and managing food , fibres and, increasingly, fuel. It is the basic production facility in food production. Farms may be owned and operated by a single...

 policy, syphilis

Syphilis

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...

 testing, the Tennessee Valley Authority

Tennessee Valley Authority

The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected...

, and housing inequity. These newspaper clippings were adapted into plays intended to inform audiences, often with progressive

Progressivism

Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...

 or left-wing themes. Triple-A Plowed Under, for instance, attacked the U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

 for killing an aid agency for farmers. These politically-themed plays quickly drew criticism from members of Congress

United States Congress

The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

.

Although the undisguised political invective in the Living Newspapers sparked controversy, they also proved popular with audiences. As an art form, the Living Newspaper is perhaps the FTP's most well-known work.

Problems with the FTP and Congress intensified when the State Department

United States Department of State

The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...

 objected to the first Living Newspaper, Ethiopia, about Haile Selassie and his nation's struggles against Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

's invading Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 forces. The U.S. government soon mandated that the FTP, a federal government agency, could not depict foreign heads of state on the stage, for fear of diplomatic backlash. Playwright and director Elmer Rice

Elmer Rice

Elmer Rice was an American playwright. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his 1929 play, Street Scene.-Early years:...

, head of the New York office of the FTP, resigned in protest.

Many of the notable artists of the time participated in the FTP, including Susan Glaspell

Susan Glaspell

Susan Keating Glaspell was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, director, novelist, biographer and poet. She was a founding member of the Provincetown Players, one of the most important collaboratives in the development of modern drama in the United States...

 who served as Midwest Bureau Director. The legacy of the FTP can also be found in a new generation of theater artists whose careers began with the FTP. Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

, Orson Welles

Orson Welles

George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

, John Houseman

John Houseman

John Houseman was a Romanian-born British-American actor and film producer who became known for his highly publicized collaboration with director Orson Welles from their days in the Federal Theatre Project through to the production of Citizen Kane...

, Martin Ritt

Martin Ritt

Martin Ritt was an American director, actor, and playwright who worked in both film and theater. He was born in New York City.-Early career and influences:...

, Elia Kazan

Elia Kazan

Elia Kazan was an American director and actor, described by the New York Times as "one of the most honored and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history". Born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, to Greek parents originally from Kayseri in Anatolia, the family emigrated...

, Joseph Losey

Joseph Losey

Joseph Walton Losey was an American theater and film director. After studying in Germany with Bertolt Brecht, Losey returned to the United States, eventually making his way to Hollywood...

, Marc Blitzstein

Marc Blitzstein

Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, better known as Marc Blitzstein , was an American composer. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration...

, Arthur Arent and Abe Feder all became established, in part, through their work in the FTP. Blitzstein, Houseman and Welles collaborated on the controversial FTP production of The Cradle Will Rock

The Cradle Will Rock

The Cradle Will Rock is a 1937 musical by Marc Blitzstein. Originally a part of the Federal Theatre Project, it was directed by Orson Welles, and produced by John Houseman. The show was recorded and released on seven 78-rpm discs in 1938, making it the first cast album recording.The musical is a...

.

The FTP was the most expensive of the Federal One projects, consuming 29.1 percent of Federal One's budget. (However, this budget was less than three-fourths of one percent of the total WPA budget.)

On June 30, 1939, the FTP was ended when its funding was canceled, largely attributed to strong Congressional objections to the overtly left-wing political tones of many FTP productions.

African American Theatre

The Negro Theatre Project (NTP) was part of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) and had units that were set up in cities throughout the United States. The units were located in four different geographical regions of the country. In the West, units were located in Seattle, Washington, and Los Angeles, California.In the East,units were located in New York City, New York, Boston, Massachusetts, Hartford, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Newark, New Jersey. In the South, there were units in Raleigh, North Carolina, Durham, North Carolina, and Birmingham, Alabama. In the Midwest, units were located in Chicago, Illinois, Peoria, Illinois, and Cleveland, Ohio. The project provided employment and apprenticeships to black playwrights, directors, actors, and technicians. The project offered a much needed source of assistance for African American theatre from 1935 to 1939.

The New York Negro Unit was active and well known. It was located at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, and staged some 30 plays. The most popular production was the Haitian, or “voodoo,” Macbeth (1935), an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play set in the Caribbean and directed by Orson Welles. Other plays included Frank Wilson’s folk drama Walk Together, Children (1936), which described the deportation of 100 African American children from the South to the North to work for low wages. Arna Bontemps and Countee Cullen’s The Conjur Man Dies (1936), was a farcical mystery that dramatized Rudolph Fisher’s mystery-melodrama. Also in 1936, J. Augustus Smith and Peter Morrell co-authored Turpentine, a social drama focusing on the injustice of Southern labor camps. George MacEntee's The Case of Philip Lawrence (1937) was a courtroom melodrama and Haiti (1938) by William Dubois, was a historical drama about overthrowing the Haitian government.

A lightly fictionalized version of the FTP's story is presented in the 1999 film Cradle Will Rock

Cradle Will Rock

Cradle Will Rock is a 1999 drama film which chronicles the process and events that surrounded the production of the original 1937 musical The Cradle Will Rock by Marc Blitzstein...

.

External links

• Footage of Orson Welles and the Federal Theatre Project's 1936 "Voodoo Macbeth" - with informative annotations.
• Coast to Coast: The Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939 - A Library of Congress exhibition with photographs and slideshows about the FTP.
• American Memory - The New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939
• Triple A Plowed Under Full text plus recreation-for-radio production of this Federal Theater Project drama from American Studies at the University of Virginia
• Ponce, Pedro, "An Hour Upon the Stage: The Brief Life of Federal Theatre," Humanities, July/August 2003
• GMU Special Collection & Archives: Federal Theatre Project Playscript and Radioscript Collection
• Federal Theatre Project Materials Collection - online images from George Mason University Library.
• Living New Deal Project, California
• Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Federal Theater Project