scholarly journals Pinocchio of the Red Decade: On Stage and on Screen

2021 ◽  
pp. 310-330
Author(s):  
Yulia A. Kleiman
Keyword(s):  
Full Length ◽  
Federal Theatre Project ◽  
Organic Part ◽  
Children's Theatre ◽  
Walt Disney ◽  
Soviet Theater ◽  
Federal Theatre ◽  
Social Message

Walt Disney’s studio created second full-length film Pinocchio in 1940. Its plot and interpretation of the characters were significantly different from the Carlo Collodi’s novel. Disney wrote enthusiastic letter to playwright and director Yasha Frank, who staged Pinocchio as theatre extravaganza in 1937. This production has become a landmark of the Children’s Theatre Project in the framework of Federal Theatre Project, being visually picturesque, inventive and up-to-date according to its social message. It was a story about the complexity of the emergence of a new human, which was especially significant in the context of the ideas of revising the structure of society. There is a reason to see in the Pinocchio script an attempt to substitute theatre dramaturgy by circus language, so essential for the Soviet theater of 1910–20s. The plot was split into numbers performed by professional variety and circus performers, and was reassembled: gags were an organic part of this new plot. However, Frank may not have escaped the influence of animation as well. The article is based on Yasha Frank’s working script, photos and reviews. It examines circus and cinema elements that were used for the theatre’s Pinocchio by Yasha Frank, and its influence to famous Walt Disney’ studio cartoon.

Gertrude Stein's Identity:

2006 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-99
Author(s):  
John Bell
Keyword(s):  
Gertrude Stein ◽  
Federal Theatre Project ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Thornton Wilder ◽  
Theatre Production ◽  
Puppet Theatre ◽  
Federal Theatre

Donald Vestal's 1930s puppet theatre production of a Gertrude Stein play, Identity, or I Am I Because My Little Dog Knows Me, marked a confluence of Midwest modernism, the resources of the Federal Theatre Project, the development of American puppet theatre as a modernist art form, and the coincidental presence of Stein, Vestal, Thornton Wilder, Bil Baird, and other artists of 1930s Chicago.

For the People

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-128
Author(s):  
Naomi Graber
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
The Political ◽  
Federal Theatre Project ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Center ◽  
Federal Theatre

Several projects from the late 1930s saw Weill writing in American folk idioms in ways that he carried over into the 1940s. One Man from Tennessee (1937, unfinished), written for the Federal Theatre Project, uses Leftist language to address contemporary political issues, although problems with the libretto doomed the endeavor. The World’s Fair pageant Railroads on Parade (1939, rev. 1940) represents Weill’s willingness to work within the political center, which coincided with mounting tensions with Germany. After the war (and his naturalization), Weill returned to folk idioms with Down in the Valley (1948), which draws on some of the same musical, theatrical, and political ideas as One Man from Tennessee, but in a drastically different cultural context.

‘Injunction Granted’ in Its Times: a Living Newspaper Reappraised

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 (23) ◽  
pp. 279-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerry Cobb
Keyword(s):  
Federal Theatre Project ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Theatre ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Theatrical Practice ◽  
Federal Theatre ◽  
The University ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
Living Newspapers

Back in the early 1970s, the original Theatre Quarterly published a number of articles which revived interest in the Federal Theatre Project. In TQ 4, Heinz Bernard placed the work of the FTP's Living Newspaper Unit in the context of American left-wing theatrical practice in the 1930s, and a piece on its techniques by Arthur Arent, the principal writer of the Living Newspapers, first published in 1938, was reprinted in the same issue. Then, in TQ 9 (1973), came Arnold Goldman's incisive and far-ranging article, ‘Life and Death of the Living Newspaper Unit’, which not only traced the political rise and fall of the Unit and the Project, but suggested the importance of the Living Newspaper form to American political theatre, and identified important formal links with Soviet and German practices. This marked the beginning of a reassessment of the work of the Unit, whose reputation had been tarnished and somewhat marginalized in the wake of the FTP's closure by Congress on the grounds of political extremism, and the subsequent legacy of the McCarthy years. The present article by Gerry Cobb continues the reassessment process, and deals with the Living Newspaper considered most contentious of all both by Congressional opponents of the Project and by its own hierarchy – Injunction Granted. Cobb argues that this piece was singled out for attack because of its divergence from the policies of the New Deal, and its call for the organization of workers under the auspices of the CIO, its politics thus coming to obscure its theatrical strengths. His article both demonstrates the historical relevance of Injunction Granted at the time of its creation, and emphasizes and reassesses its strengths as a piece of theatre. Gerry Cobb is a postgraduate student at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, where, in addition to working on a doctoral thesis on the Living Newspapers, he is editing a volume of the four major works in the form, including Injunction Granted, for publication by Bristol Classical Press late in 1990.

Pointing to the Future

1995 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-87
Author(s):  
Lorraine A. Brown
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Federal Theatre Project ◽  
American Theater ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
The Arts ◽  
National Theater ◽  
The Status ◽  
Federal Theatre ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Considerable Body

As many historians of American theater and culture know, the Fenwick Library of George Mason University (GMU) became the home in 1974 to a major collection of Federal Theatre Project (FTP) materials. As many researchers also know, some FTP material was removed from GMU to the Library of Congress in the fall of 1994. In this essay, I will bring Theatre Survey's readers up to date on the status of the FTP collection, which, because of its continuing development over two decades, houses not only a considerable body of FTP material but also early records of the American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA). ANTA in its earliest days was a worthy successor to the FTP in the drive to have a national theater in the United States. Since 1980, all of these holdings have been an integral part of the Center for Government, Society and the Arts (CGSA) at GMU. CGSA has been the site of many activities exploring the relationship between our government and the arts, ranging from conferences on theater and cultural studies to our own theatrical productions of FTP materials, some of which I will outline here.

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.

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