Federal Theatre Project
With the onset of the Great Depression, and masses of people, including theatre folk, out of work, Franklin D. Roosevelt established the WPA to provide jobs for many of the unemployed. Among the numerous segments of this program was the Federal Theatre Project aimed at employing out-of-work entertainers. In September 1935, WPA head Harry Hopkins, who had read Flanagan's 1928 book "Shifting Scenes of the European Theatre", asked Flanagan to lead this program.
Flanagan's vision for the Project was to bring theatre to the great majority of the American public who had never witnessed it, plus producing cutting-edge high-quality theatrical material. This program involved creating children's theatre as well as "Living Newspaper" plays, based on German director Erwin Piscator's concepts, that would reach out to the culturally unaware. Though the program enabled the creation of a number of fine works, some argued over political agendas being delivered by plays. Concerns over works with messages deemed to be communistic and socialistic plagued Flanagan and the Theatre Project. Flanagan was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1938. After four years, the Federal Theatre Project was shut down and Flanagan returned to Vassar.
Read more about this topic: Hallie Flanagan, Career
Famous quotes containing the words federal, theatre and/or project:
“Newsmen believe that news is a tacitly acknowledged fourth branch of the federal system. This is why most news about government sounds as if it were federally mandated—serious, bulky and blandly worthwhile, like a high-fiber diet set in type.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Oh Death he is a little man,
And he goes from do’ to do’ ...”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)