Rose McClendon and the Black Units of the Federal Theatre Project: A Lost Contribution

1992 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 144-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Plum
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Federal Theatre Project ◽  
Project Director ◽  
Orson Welles ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
Official History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Federal Theatre

Although the then-called Negro Units of the Federal Theatre Project arguably played a pivotal role in the development of African-American theatre, Rose McClendon (1884–1936) is unarguably one of the most overlooked contributors to its history. This oversight is extremely puzzling, in view of the fact that McClendon co-directed the Harlem Unit with John Houseman when it opened in 1935. Five years later Federal Theatre Project director Hallie Flanagan attributed much of the initial success of the unit, as well as the very idea of creating separate black units, to McClendon. Yet, except for a paragraph in Flanagan's Arena, little else has been recorded about McClendon's participation in the Project. Even the official history of the Negro Units written by the Federal Theatre Project's Department of Information claims that “guiding the destinations of the Negro Theatre at its inception were John Houseman and Orson Welles.” The history makes no reference to McClendon.

The Federal Theatre Project: A Case Study. By Barry B. Witham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; pp. 190. $70 cloth.

2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-135
Author(s):  
Rena Fraden
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Federal Theatre Project ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
Continental Congress ◽  
History Of ◽  
Federal Theatre ◽  
First Time

The Federal Theatre Project . . . was a unique and influential experiment in American theatre; not just for its outspoken politics, but because it reimagined the very way that theatre was produced in the United States. For the first time in the history of the country theatre was subsidized by the federal government, a practice with widespread precedents in Europe and Asia, but one that was totally out of step with free enterprise business practice and a culture which had banned plays in its Second Continental Congress. (1)So opens Barry Witham's case study of the Seattle Federal Theatre Project from 1935 to 1939.

A History of African American Theatre. By Errol G. Hill and James V. Hatch. Cambridge Studies in American Theatre and Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; pp. 608. $130 cloth.

2005 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-129
Author(s):  
Harry Elam
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Black Theatre ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
American Theatre History ◽  
Daunting Challenge

Over the more than twenty years since the publication of two profoundly influential collections—Errol Hill's two-volume anthology of critical essays The Theatre of Black Americans (1980) and James V. Hatch's first edition of the play anthology Black Theatre USA (1974)—there has been considerable activity in African American theatre scholarship. Yet even as scholars have produced new collections of historical and critical essays that cover a wide range of African American theatre history, book-length studies that document particular moments in the historical continuum such as the Harlem Renaissance, and Samuel Hay's broader study African American Theatre: An Historical and Critical Analysis (1994), no one until now has written a comprehensive study of African American theatre history. Into this void have stepped two of the aforementioned distinguished scholars of African American theatre, Errol G. Hill and James V. Hatch. To be certain, writing a comprehensive history of African American theatre poses a daunting challenge for anyone hearty enough to undertake it. Where to begin? What to include and exclude? With their study, A History of African American Theatre, Hill and Hatch show themselves indeed worthy of the challenge. They explore the evolution of African American theatre across time and space, documenting the particular efforts of artists, writers, scholars, and practitioners, from inside as well as outside the United States, that have had an impact on our understanding of African American theatre. The authors make clear that the definition of African American theatre from the beginning has been in constant flux and that it has been affected by the changing social times in American as much as it has influenced those times.

Free, Adult, Uncensored: The Living History of the Federal Theatre Project

1979 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 564
Author(s):  
Robert A. Adubato ◽  
John O'Connor ◽  
Lorraine Brown
Keyword(s):  
Living History ◽  
Federal Theatre Project ◽  
History Of ◽  
Federal Theatre

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 251-254
Author(s):  
Kate Dossett
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Black History ◽  
Federal Theatre Project ◽  
Amiri Baraka ◽  
Black Arts ◽  
Black Theatre ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Federal Theatre

The conclusion considers the impact of Black Federal Theatre on the broader history of African Americans and the New Deal. It argues that African Americans did not wait to be inspired or reined in by New Deal programs, but rather devised new techniques and adapted existing dramatic forms to make space for Black authored dramas. The rich history of Black drama developed on the Federal Theatre Project has long been marginalized in histories of U.S. theatre and culture and isolated from the radical Black traditions it helped create. Knowledge producing practices of archival and academic institutions have long marginalized Black cultural histories. However the Black Arts Movement played a pivotal role in the recovery of Black Federal Theatre. The work of Theodore Ward was published for the first time in 1970s Black Theatre anthologies and celebrated by Black theatre artists such as Amiri Baraka. The history of the archive of the Federal Theatre Project is a reminder of how easily Black history can be buried as well as the long and rich theatre heritage which has shaped the radical Black tradition.

Wrestling with Heroes

2020 ◽  
pp. 122-163
Author(s):  
Kate Dossett
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Black Writers ◽  
Federal Theatre Project ◽  
Orson Welles ◽  
Native Son ◽  
Natural Man ◽  
Federal Theatre

This chapter and Chapters 4 and 5 consider how African Americans debated and dramatized the Black hero in Federal Theatre dramas. Chapter 3 focuses on the variant manuscripts of Theodore Browne’s John Henry drama, Natural Man. Written for and staged by the Seattle Negro Unit in 1937, it was significantly revised by the newly formed American Negro Theatre in Harlem in 1941. This chapter situates these manuscripts at the very center of a broader conversation about the problem of the hero that occupied Black writers in and beyond the Federal Theatre Project. In particular it compares the revisions made to Natural Man, with the stage adaptation of Richard Wright’s prize winning novel Native Son (1940). Running at St. James Theatre in Manhattan just as Natural Man opened in Harlem in spring 1941, the stage version was a collaboration between Wright, the white dramatist Paul Green, and the director-producer team of Orson Welles and John Houseman. While Wright had previously advocated for Green’s ‘Negro folk’ dramas when he worked on the Chicago Negro Unit, the two men came to have conflicting views about Wright’s hero, Bigger Thomas. Wright captured their troubled collaboration in a seven-page drama entitled “The Problem of the Hero.”

From the Margins to Center Stage: Tyler Perry’s Popular African American Theatre

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rashida Z. Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
Black Performance ◽  
History Of

If Perry now functions as a platform onto himself, his career began with seemingly much less broad, but no less significant, aspirations. In her analysis of taste, class, and the popular, in Chapter TwoRashida D. Shaw places Tyler Perry’s career within the context of a Black performance and theatre history that extends back to the nineteenth century, as she centralizes the history of the “Chitlin Circuit” or “Urban Theatre.” After establishing a literary cultural history that frames and restages the popularity, appeal, and reception of Perry’s plays, Shaw’s analysis more closely explores the ramifications of Perry’s behind-the-scenes role and onstage presence at the 2012 Tony Awards during a year that resulted in numerous historic successes for not only African American theatre-makers, but also for African American–centric productions in general.

The Impresarios of Beale Street: African American and Italian American Theatre Managers in Memphis, 1900–1915

2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-47
Author(s):  
Stephen Huff
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
National Level ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Color Line ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
Italian American ◽  
History Of ◽  
Southern City ◽  
Theatre Management

Music scholars Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff have researched what they call “a deep African American vaudeville theater tradition” in Memphis during the first decade of the twentieth century that helped lead the way to the commercialization of the blues. Their body of work provides a very useful and fascinating historical overview of the black vaudeville scene of the time on the national level. This article seeks to broaden that overview, using a much more focused, microhistorical perspective on the history of theatre management on one particular street in one particular, midsized southern city. It argues that in Memphis, the story of African American and Italian American theatre managers shows that realities were often much more complex than histories that portray a rigid and heavily drawn color line have suggested.

scholarly journals “All’s Well that Ends Welles”: Orson Welles and the “Voodoo” "Macbeth"

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (28) ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
Robert Sawyer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Federal Funding ◽  
Federal Theatre Project ◽  
Orson Welles ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Federal Theatre ◽  
Back To Work

The Federal Theatre Project, which was established in 1935 to put unemployed Americans back to work after the Great Depression, and later employed over 10,000 people at its peak, financed one particularly original adaptation of Shakespeare: the “voodoo” Macbeth directed by Orson Welles in 1936. Debuting in Harlem with an all-black cast, the play’s setting resembled a Haiti-like island instead of ancient Scotland, and Welles also supplemented the witches with voodoo priestesses, sensing that the practice of voodoo was more relevant, if not more realistic, for a contemporary audience than early modern witchcraft. My essay will consider how the terms “national origins” and “originality” intersect in three distinct ways vis-a-vis this play: The Harlem locale for the premier, the Caribbean setting for the tragedy, and the federal funding for the production.

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