Also included are playscripts for twenty-two productions.
For out-of-work theater people, Hopkins devised the Federal Theatre Project, and in May 1935 he asked Flanagan, director of the highly regarded Experimental Theater at New York’s Vassar College, to take charge of it.
Under WPA auspices, the administration initiated Federal One, which included the Federal Art, Music, Theater, and Writers' Projects, cultural programs to provide work relief for unemployed artists, musicians, dramatists, and writers. [Barry Witham] -- Drawing upon archival resources, official correspondence, and personal interviews, this book provides a detailed examination of the U.S. Federal Theatre Project in the decade of the 1930s. The FTP began in 1935 as part of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration, employing several thousand actors, directors, playwrights, producers and others in the entertainment industry during the Great Depression. The Federal Theatre Project was a government-subsidized program established in 1935 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide jobs for theater artists during the Great Depression in the United States. These images are of the original designs used on posters to advertise FTP plays in many different American cities from 1935 to 1939. Although it operated as a national initiative, the Federal Theatre Project established regional administrations throughout the country. The vision of its national director, Hallie Flanagan, was also to develop a rich, regional, accessible theatre scene across the nation, with local theatres responsive to local issues. The Federal Theatre Project (1935-1939), one of four arts projects created under the Works Progress Administration (WPA), embodied the possibilities and flaws of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s early response to the Great Depression. Federal Theatre took advantage of artists who were already working for social change. Many of those who joined the Federal Theatre project had been part of the left-wing Worker’s Theatre Movement of the 1920s, creating a people’s theatre, doing street theatre, and founding companies with the purpose of producing socially relevant plays. The Federal Theatre Project (FTP) Materials Collection contains nearly one thousand different 35mm slides taken from original posters, set designs, and costume designs. The Federal Theatre Project : a case study. These regional centers adapted themselves to the needs of their local communities addressing issues of both national and local significance. Get this from a library!
The Federal Theatre Project was a New Deal program (1935-1939) designed to provide relief for unemployed theatre artists. Federal Theatre Project photograph collection, C0205, Box 7, Folder 31 Special Collections Research Center.