Guide to the Federal Theatre Project playscript and radioscript collection, 1930s

Federal Theatre Project photograph C0002

Historical Information

The Federal Theatre Project was a division of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which provided employment for large numbers of artists, writers, and performers during the Great Depression (1929-1939). The Federal Theatre began in 1935 and, until its end in 1939, flourished as the first and only federally sponsored and subsidized theater program in the United States. Directed by Hallie Flanagan (1880-1969), it was a way for theatrical professionals to gain employment during the Depression. Jobs were provided for many people, including actors, playwrights, scene designers, scene builders, seamstresses, lighting experts, ushers, box-office men, and stagehands.

Like many New Deal programs implemented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Federal Theatre Project was intended not only to benefit its participants, but also to enrich the condition of the nation. Theater was a distinguished part of American popular culture, but the economic downturn of the Depression had bankrupted the entire theater industry. As the theater houses closed down, the nation was left without an outlet for theatrical creativity. According to Hallie Flanagan, this hurt the nation as much as it hurt the theater industry - indeed, the nation was their audience and the theater could provide entertaining distractions from the effects of Depression as well as offer commentary on present conditions.

But it was not enough to simply return to the pre-Depression concept of theater. In the first meeting her staff Flanagan expressed her willingness to follow Roosevelt's experimental approach to public policy: "In a changing world, a world of experiment, the stage too must experiment - with ideas, with the psychological relationship of men and women, with color and light.... The theatre must grow up."

Flanagan pursued her ideal of developing the relationship between the Federal Theatre and the federal government: "Any theatre sponsored by the government of the United States should do no plays of a cheap, trivial, outworn or vulgar nature, but only such plays as the Government can stand proudly behind in a planned theatrical program, national in scope, regional in emphasis, and American in democratic attitude." To Flanagan, it was imperative that this new theater should be progressive and experimental, yet within a patriotic and informative framework.

The productions that best embodied Flanagan's views on theater were the Living Newspapers. These hard-hitting, poignant plays dealt with contemporary factual material, dramatizing issues such as housing, agriculture, labor, and destitution. Always ending on an upbeat note, Living Newspapers underscored the importance of hard work and morality in overcoming difficult times. Living Newspaper titles include: Triple A Plowed Under, Injunction Granted, One Third of a Nation, and Spirocheta.

The Federal Theatre was noted for employing black Americans at a time when the Federal Government did not actively protect the rights of minorities. The "Negro Theater" (as it was called in the 1930s) was an established industry before the Depression, and it greatly contributed to the success of the Federal Theatre Project. Some of the most spectacular productions were put on by black theater professionals, for example: Macbeth, Haiti, Turpentine, Run Little Chillun, and The Trial of Dr. Beck.

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Scope and Content

The Federal Theatre Project Playscript and Radioscript Collection contains over 200 copied playscripts and radioscripts, written and performed in the 1930s for the Federal Theatre Project. Also included is a collection of 62 copied Federal Theatre programs, handbills given to the audience at the beginning of a production. There is also a copy of The Flexible Stage, a book by Emmet Lavery about the history of the Federal Theatre Project. And there are the works of several noted authors in the collection, including Upton Sinclair, Orson Welles, Sinclair Lewis, Arthur Arent, and Langston Hughes.

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Arrangement

Organized alphabetically.

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Restrictions

Access Restrictions

Collection is open to research.

Use Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

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Related Material

Special Collections and Archives holds the Federal Theatre Project collection, which includes numerous personal and organizational records as well as oral histories.

The scripts are also available as a series in the FTP digital collection.

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Index Terms

Corporate Names:

Subjects:

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Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Federal Theatre Project playscript and radioscript collection, Collection #C0002, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University.

Acquisition Information

Donated by the Federal Theatre Project.

Processing Information

Processed by Special Collections and Archives staff.

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Contents List