WPA Federal Theatre Project, national theatre project sponsored and funded by the U.S. government as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Founded in 1935, it was the first federally supported theatre in the United States. Its purpose was to create jobs for unemployed theatrical people during the Great Depression, and its director was the educator and playwright Hallie Flanagan.
The Federal Theatre Project employed some 10,000 professionals in all facets of the theatre, and Flanagan oversaw the organization of about 1,000 productions that were mounted in four years in 40 states, often presented free to the public. These productions included classical and modern drama, children’s plays, puppet shows, musical comedies, and documentary theatre known as Living Newspaper. Other projects included producing plays by young, unknown American playwrights, establishing black American theatre, and presenting radio broadcasts of dramatic works. The early careers of Orson Welles, John Houseman, and Elmer Rice were all associated with the Federal Theatre Project. Following a series of controversial investigations by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and Subcommittee on Appropriations regarding the Federal Theatre’s outspoken leftist commentary on social and economic issues, the Federal Theatre Project was terminated in 1939 by congressional action.
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Western theatre: United StatesFrom 1935 to 1939 the WPA Federal Theatre Project, established and funded by the Works Project Administration of the U.S. government to provide employment for out-of-work actors, presented hundreds of productions of all sorts throughout the country and showed that a large untapped audience existed for live theatre at low…
Great Depression: Federal arts programs…Federal Writers’ Project, and the Federal Theatre Project as part of the WPA; thousands of artists, architects, and educators found work in American museums, which flourished during the Great Depression.…
Orson Welles: Theatre and radio in the 1930s…the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA’s) Federal Theatre Project. Their first effort, for the Federal Theatre’s Negro Division, was
Macbeth, with an all African American cast and the setting changed from Scotland to Haiti. They began 1937 with Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus(starring Welles). Their most (in)famous…
Works Progress Administration…Project, Federal Writers’ Project, and Federal Theater Project—all under WPA aegis—employed thousands of artists, writers, and actors in such cultural programs as the creation of art work for public buildings, the documentation of local life, and the organization of community theatres; thousands of artists, architects, construction workers, and educators found…
Great Depression, worldwide economic downturn that began in 1929 and lasted until about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized Western world, sparking fundamental changes in economic institutions, macroeconomic policy, and economic theory. Although it originated in the United States, the Great Depression…
More About WPA Federal Theatre Project6 references found in Britannica articles
- Great Depression
- innovations in American theatre
- Living Newspaper program
- role of Welles
- Works Progress Administration