The Promise of the Green New Deal

US theatre suffers from insufficient funding, mass unemployment, and widespread structural inequities. The Green New Deal, with its calls to create millions of highwage jobs and promote equity, offers a solution: establish a Green Federal Theatre. This examination of two historical Federal Theatre Project structures — the National Service Bureau and the Community Drama Program — culminates in a manifesto for a Green Federal Theatre.

Kate Dossett. Radical Black Theatre in the New Deal

Radical Black Theatre in the New Deal focuses on the Negro Units of the Federal Theatre Project (1935–39). Dossett argues that Black performance communities consisting of Black theatre artists and the Black public sphere helped shaped the performance and reception of theatre manuscripts in the New Deal era.

For the People

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.

Introducing ficto-feminism: a non-fiction, fictitious conversation with Hallie Flanagan, director of the Federal Theatre Project (1935–1939)

PurposeFicto-feminism is offered here as a creative method for feminist historical inquiry in management and organizational studies (MOSs).Design/methodology/approachThis paper introduces a new method called ficto-feminism. Using feminist polemics as a starting point, ficto-feminism fuses aspects of collective biography with the emic potential of autoethnography and rhizomatic capacity of fictocriticism to advance not only a new account of history in subject but also in style of writing.FindingsThe aim of ficto-feminism is to create a plausible, powerful and persuasive account of an overlooked female figure which not only challenges convention but also surfaces her lost lessons and accomplishments to benefit today's development of theory and practice.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper reviews the methodological components of ficto-feminism and speaks to the merit of writing differently and incorporating fictional techniques.Originality/valueTo illustrate the method in action, the paper features a non-fiction, fictitious conversation with Hallie Flanagan (1890–1969) and investigates her role as national director of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) (1935–1939). The FTP was part of the most elaborate relief programs ever conceived as part of the New Deal (a series of public works projects and financial reforms enacted in the 1930s in the USA).

Pinocchio of the Red Decade: On Stage and on Screen

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.

Government Worker

This chapter discusses Eubie’s employment by the WPA as a composer for the Federal Theatre Project’s variety shows. The chapter also explores Eubie’s partnership with new lyricist, Milton Reddie; Reddie and Blake’s work on the show, Swing It; the show’s reception on Broadway; Reddie and Blake’s attempts to interest black bandleaders in the work of black songwriters; their formation of an association to promote black songwriters’ work; and their formation of a song-writing service for would-be popular-song tunesmiths. The chapter also examine how, inspired by the success of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Blake wrote a few piano works that wed a classical harmonic approach to his own syncopated melodies; the illness and subsequent death of Blake’s wife Avis, and its impact on him; Blake’s reunion with Andy Razaf to compose the revue Tan Manhattan, and their attempts to have it performed; Blake’s hiring by the USO to tour American camps; difficulties on the road touring the South; and his first meeting with Marion Gant Tyler, who would become his second wife.

They Love to Watch Us Dance

The evolving relationship between Black performers, and white and Black spectators, is central to the story of Black federal theatre. Chapter 2 examines what happens when Black performance and white spectatorship become the focus of the drama itself. It examines Abram Hill and John Silvera’s Liberty Deferred, alongside Stars and Bars, a satirical newspaper developed by the Hartford Negro Unit but usually credited solely to the white dramatist Ward Courtney. Both newspapers position white and Black spectators as objects of the Black gaze and both mock the pretensions to radical innovation by white Living Newspapers such as One Third of a Nation. Scholarship on the Federal Theatre’s Living Newspaper relies almost entirely on Living Newspapers developed and staged by white theatre practitioners. This chapter argues that Black Living Newspapers developed a variety of techniques to unmask the performative devices used within white Living Newspapers that consolidate even as they critique the racial discourses which enforce Black subordination. In so doing, they compelled white FTP administrators to engage with the history and practice of Black performance and white spectatorship.

Introduction

The introduction explores the significance of Black theatre manuscripts for histories of the Federal Theatre Project, Black literary heritage and the Radical Black tradition. Black theatre manuscripts developed on the Federal Theatre Project were not always staged or published, but they document Black creativity and theatrical innovation in the 1930s and constitute a crucial if overlooked part of American cultural history. Theatre histories that only include plays staged or published will invariably be histories of what was interesting or acceptable to whites. This book examines what was important and necessary to African Americans. It develops the idea of the Black Performance Community, a temporary community which performance creates among spectators, performers, directors, writers and others whose backstage roles shape manuscripts and performance. It argues that histories of Black theatre need to consider variant manuscripts, the communities of unacknowledged collaborators that shaped them over time, and the role of the archives and anthologies in shaping knowledge production about Black theatre.