Web Lecture #6

The Federal Theater Project

Lesson Overview

The Federal Theater Project was a unique time of United States Government support of theater companies. For the first time, the government paid African American and other artists to stage plays about their ethnic experiences.

The lecture will also discuss the types of African American drama that emerged from the Federal Theater Project. In class we will focus on the activities of the Lafayette Theater of Harlem, the Chicago production of Big White Fog, and the Living Newspaper "Liberty Deferred" that never received a staged presentation.

 

Key Concepts

 

  • The Federal Theater Project

  • Hallie Flanagan

  • Government Funding of the Arts

  • Negro Units and their Drama

  • Rose McClendon

  • Voodoo Mcbeth

  • Big White Fog

  • Living Newspapers

  • Liberty Deferred

 

Federal Theater Project

Challenging theatre traditions in several ways, the Federal Theatre Project was particularly bold in its plan to make drama available to the masses for the first time. (Ross, Ronald. "The Role of Blacks in the Federal Theatre, 1935-1939," The Theatre of Black Americans edited by Errol Hill, New York: Appaluse Books, 1987)

A poster advertising Orson Welles's production of Faustus

Hansel and Gretel nibble at the Gingerbread Cottage,
Federal Theatre Project production of Hansel and Gretel,
S.F. Marionette Unit,
San Francisco, March 1937

"An operating scene, just before the lights failed, showing the importance of 'Power,'"
from the WPA Federal Theatre Project's production of Power

"Leaning on a shovel"
skit from New York City production of Sing for Your Supper
New York City Federal Theatre Project, WPA, May 1939

"Wardell Saunders as Malcolm,"
from Orson Welles's "voodoo" Macbeth,
staged by the Federal Theatre Project of the WPA

In 1935, an act of Congress established the Federal Theater Project as a part of Franklin Delano RooseveltÕs "New Deal." The stock market crash of 1929 had created a national crisis of poverty and unemployment. The Federal Theater Project was designed to provide employment opportunities for unemployed artists.

The project opened August 27, 1935, and ran until June 30, 1939. During these four years, the government subsidized professional theater activities throughout the United States. At its peak, the project employed 10,000 people in forty states. For White artists, the Federal Theater Project was a temporary employment program to cover them when there was no commercial work. For African Americans, it was a first opportunity to actively participate in theater that was not about stereotypes, and, to explore roles as writers, producers, designers, and directors of American theater. The project effectively educated unskilled people who were newly entering the field of theater. Fifty percent (50%) of the personnel were actors.

Roosevelt selected Hallie Flanagan to be in charge of all units of the Federal Theater Project. Her background was in

Hallie Flanagan

social services and she wanted to develop theater and arts projects that were conscious of changes that needed to be made in the social order. She wanted to develop a theater that was regional and that reflected the diversity of America.

The scope of the Federal Theater Project was great. Plays fell into the categories of new plays, classical plays, play formerly produced on Broadway, modern foreign plays, stock plays, revues and musical comedies, vaudeville, dance productions, Early Americana, American pageants, puppet and marionette plays. Each of these types of plays were produced at regional centers throughout the country.

There were distinct ethnic units within the project Ð Yiddish, Irish, Italian, Spanish, African-American, and German. The "Negro Units produced the work of exceptional playwrights like Willis Richardson (The Chip WomanÕs Fortune), Langston Hughes (Mulatto), and Georgia Douglas Johnson (A Sunday Morning in the South). They also mounted African American productions of plays written by White playwrights. Twenty-two Negro Units were disbursed throughout the country with important centers in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and New Haven.

Sometimes the Negro units were extensions of already existing companies that had been established during the little theater movement of the 1920Õs. An example is the. Gilpin Players of Connecticut, a company founded by Charles Gilpin who played the lead in The Emperor Jones.

Rose McClendon founded the most famous of the Negro Units, the Federal Negro Theater that was housed in the Lafayette Theater of Harlem. McClendon was an actress who had appeared in plays like AbrahamÕs Bosom, Porgy, and Mulatto and was actively producing plays in the Harlem community as early as 1931. She was committed to encouraging writing and producing by local talented youth. Prior to the Federal Theater Project she had established the Harlem Experimental Theater a company that produced Black versions of classical plays by playwrights like George Bernard Shaw, Euguene O Neill, and William Shakespeare. She also encouraged African Americans to perform whenever possible in current Broadway productions like Androcles and the Lion.

When organizers of the Federal Theater Project met with Rose McClendon, it was decided that a White director should be placed in charge of the New York Negro unit to give it credibility. Rose McClendon was credited with calling for this arrangement.

...since Negroes have always been performers and had no previous means of learning direction and design, they would prefer to start under more experienced direction.

She was assigned co-directorship of the Harlem unit along with John Houseman and Orson Welles. Their most successful commercial production was Voodoo Macbeth. McClendonÕs role as co-Director was diminished in the historical record of the project and there is little evidence of her continuing contributions to the Negro Unit.

During the time of the Federal Theater Project there was philosophical discussion about what Negroes should write and who should write for them. Some maintained "authentic black art required separate institutions." For example, Eugene OÕNeill wrote:

If I have one thing to sayÑto Negroes who work, or have the ambition to work, in any field of artistic expression, it is thie: Be yourselves! DonÕt reach for our stuff which we call good! Make your stuff and your goodÉWe look around with accustomed eyes at somewhat jaded landscapesÑat least too familiarÑwhile to you life ought to be as green Ðand as deepÑas 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)

Others felt that African American art should be mainstreamed into White institutions. As we shall see later in the semester, this debate continues today.

There were five general types of theater that were developed and produced within the Negro Units

1) Popular commercial plays. These were plays developed for commercial theaters and general audiences. The two most successful African American plays of this type were Swing Mikado, a musical about the jazz music scene that was produced in Chicago and the previously mentioned Voodoo Macbeth. Voodoo Macbeth set ShakespeareÕs play in mysterious and magical Haiti. African drummers and scenic effects were used to create an atmosphere of exotic savagery.

Swing Makado

2) Folk Dramas. These were plays about African American folk life and customs. A good example of this type of play is All GodÕs Chillun Got Wings by Eugene OÕNeill.

3) Historical Dramas. These were plays based around historical black characters like Go Down Moses about Harriet Tubman or Natural Man about the railroad man John Henry.

4) Social Realist plays. These were dramas that addressed social issues with dramatic characters and circumstances. One of the plays that we will be reading for class, Big White Fog is an example of this type of play. Big White Fog is unusual for its time period because it shows Blacks and Whites relating to one another and fighting side by side for a common cause. The issues that it addresses are social justice, housing, and employment for the underclass.

5) Living Newspapers. The Living Newspaper was a kind of documentary production based upon news, information, and contemporary social problems. This was one of the most unique kinds of theater produced by the Federal Theater Project. The popularity of the Living Newspaper was a direct result of the influence of socialism after the Russian Revolution. Living Newspapers expressed a concern for the underclass, urged workers to unionize, and vocalized a distrust of the capitalist system after the stock market crash. Some of the productions actually named politicians. The political nature of the Living Newspapers led to the downfall of the Federal Theater Project as a whole.

In the Living newspapers an offstage narrator voice frequently functioned as a Greek chorus who represented the "voice of the people." Like news shows, they purported to give the facts. Although they were also fictional (the author ordered and constructed the text), they were immediate, direct, and considered to be politically dangerous. One Third of a Nation was the most renown of the Living Newspapers. Its topic was tenement conditions and several different versions of it played simultaneously throughout the country.

There were only two African American Living Newspapers ever written and neither of them was actually performed.

Stars and Bars by Ward Courtney commented upon the status of blacks in Hartford, Connecticut. The title referred to the stars of the Confederacy and the bars to freedom imposed there. The "little man" was an anonymous Connecticut Yankee. The script described incidents related to Hartford life including the landing of the Amistad slave ship, the condition of the urban slums, and the difficulty of finding housing within the city. There were allegorical characters called Tuberculosis, Syphilis, etc. In the play, these characters would seize black children and toss them offstage. Characters also imitated local politicians and quote their stances on racial discrimination verbatim. The records of the Federal Theater Project indicate that the central office asked for revisions in the original script, presumably to tone down the material, however the play was never performed.

For class, we will be reading part of the Living Newspaper Liberty Deferred by John Silvera and Abram Hill. In this play two couples, one white and one black, reflect upon the history of African Americans in the United States. The excerpt in your text is incomplete, but it provides a good example of the type of dialogue that was used in these productions. The set for Liberty Deferred was a huge map of the United States map. In the second act of the play a character named 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. It is somewhere between heaven and hell, and victims are judged by how many of their constitutional rights have been violated. The play script estranged both southerners and northern white liberals. Consequently, it was never performed.

As the FTP matured, its activities became highly censored. There were tensions between the various missions of the project that included popular theater (vaudeville), social dramas, childrenÕs theater and political theater. Some thought it a waste of taxpayer money. The Federal Theater Project was de-funded in 1939 when Congress refused to finance the projectÕs budget. The project was a unique experiment in government sponsorship of socially activist art.

 

 

Discussion Questions

1) What do you think were the disadvantages of having African Americans create plays in separate facilities under White management? What were the advantages?

2) Can you think of a contemporary performance genre that is similar to the Living Newspapers?

3) Do you think that the closing of the Federal Theater Project was an act of censorship, or simply a reallocation of public funds? Should the United States government fund controversial political art?

[Introduction]
[African Grove Theater]
[Abolition]
[Minstrelsy and Popular Entertainments]
[Harlem Renaissance]
[Federal Theater Project]
[Desegregation and Civil Rights Movement]
[Black Revolutionary Arts Movement]
[The Negro Ensemble Company and Blacks in the Military]
[Home]

Copyrighted 2001, United States of America
Anita Gonzalez & Ian Granick