The Federal Theatre Project: A Case Study
Barry B. Witham, 2003
As a WPA program of work-based relief, the Federal Theatre Project may have seemed appropriate for New York and a few cities large enough to have pools of unemployed actors and theater technicians. But director Hallie Flanagan's goal was a national theater: based in local communities, addressing local issues and needs, and bringing new audiences to the medium.
As Barry Witham describes director and plan—
Flanagan was energetic, dynamic and ambitious. Like many of her contemporaries, she was also idealistic about the power of the arts to compel and humanize. She believed in the idea of a Federal Theatre and was excited about its potential to entertain and to instruct. It had the power in her imagination to transform both the kind of the theatre for which Americans yearned and the audience who would benefit from that transformation.
The plan was flawed, of course, because the government money came with significant complications. In order to be eligible for the theatre payroll, people had to qualify for unemployment: that is, the real test of their theatrical talent was often their relief status. There were exceptions. Individual units could "exempt" up to 10 percent of their employees... to insure a degree of "professionalism." But Federal Theatre would always host a struggle between those who were "right for the part" and those who qualified for relief. In addition, production costs for essential items such as paint and canvas had to be raised at the local level. The hope was that, like other WPA projects, local business or communities would"sponsor" individual projects and help to defray production expenses. That was a stumbling block, especially for units outside large metropolitan areas...
Witham, professor of theater history at the University of Washington, makes a convincing case that
Operating within the framework of the WPA agenda and struggling constantly to accommodate regional and local interest and impulses, Seattle is a unique lens for examining the complex character of Federal Theatre and for illuminating its multiple dreams and disappointments.
Those struggles included negotiating layers of WPA bureaucracy at both national and state levels—sometimes successfully, sometimes not. And local rivalries were at work among theatrical factions as well as political ones.
Productions began with whatever talent was available. "Hoofers, mystics, Hill Billy balladists, dialect comedians, tappers and a singing hird," as one early staffer recorded, were among a motley crowd—most of them former vaudevillians—who applied for work. Those selected had to be certified eligible for relief, then organized into some format for public performances.
Initially, performers were divided into two umbrella companies, "Variety" and "Revue." These were further split into smaller groups for different types of performances in different venues.
Revue groups were sent to perform in CCC camps; as in other parts of the country, camp performances were a focus of the Seattle program. Flanagan, in fact
...believed that the camps were natural venues for touring units, and the programs could be provided for free without complaint from private enterprise. In addition the camps, frequently located in isolated outposts, were eager for visitors and provided enthusiastic audiences. And those audiences were people whom Flanagan wanted the project to reach.
Witham notes, too, that
The CCC was one of the great success stories of the whole WPA enterprise. Founded originally in 1933, the camps survived throughout the entire decade in spite of considerable controversy... they were originally opposed by conservative forces and private enterprise. Organized labor believed them capable of preparing a huge apprentice labor force which would "flood the market" or of establishing the "dollar per day" wage as some kind of benchmark for skilled union workers. Antimilitarists and isolationists objected to the army supervision of the camps although the War Department was a logical choice to deal with the logistics of preparing hundreds of barracks... But as proponents of the CCC repeatedly pointed out, the service was voluntary, the rewards were for families on relief, and the projects from tree planting to fire fighting were laudatory.
Seattle's CCC Revue groups roughed it, through long hours of travel over primitive roads and overnight stays in the spartan camps.
Variety performed in and around Seattle. By the end of the first year, agent-cashier Francis Power's report estimated that
...Variety had played to a total audience of approximately 62,224 people and had traveled 14,000 miles. In prisons, orphanages, schools, soup kitchens and on dozens of improvised stages they had performed their routines carrying their own sets and costumes. This unit, Power points out, has traveled over a thousand miles every month by "truck, automobile and streetcar" and been most enthusiastically received.
Around the country, too, Variety formed the basis of the FTP's early years. From this beginning, Seattle's program branched out to include some impressive achievements, along with some ambitious plans that were not to be realized before Congress killed the project.
Plays on controversial subjects were not without opposition, depending on how sensitive local powers, including the press, found a particular topic. Yet some of the most successful productions of contemporary scripts and "
Living Newspapers" drew unexpected praise and large audiences.
A Children's Theatre laid the foundation for the local company that thrives today.
The local "Negro Unit" seems to have come about by chance. Seattle Repertory Playhouse co-founders Burton and Florence James had made connections within the African-American community while recruiting performers for a production. Looking for a project that might gain FTP support, the James now used their contacts to recruit actors and establish the Negro Repertory Company. In a city of only four to five thousand black residents, an impressive troupe would grow from these fortuitous beginnings.
Although most of the actors had no prior experience, Florence James was a seasoned teacher. She and her assistant worked with the group not just on basics of stagecraft, but also encouraged them to approach a work analytically, examining its meaning and social implications.
A core group of over twenty stayed with the company throughout the FTP's duration. As the troupe gained experience in a number of productions, some impressive acting, writing, directing, and musical composition talent would emerge.
Despite their commitment and cohesiveness, the Negro Company was never autonomous. After the James' departure, Hallie Flannagan sent a young protégé, Esther Porter, to become "caretaker." One year later, local officials handled a conflict with the state WPA director by ousting Porter (who actually had plans to leave very soon). According to Witham, this was
...a shrewd move... and a victory for Federal theatre, but once more the Negro Company — the most successful of any of the Seattle units — was abandoned. This time, being left on their own proved to be exhilarating.
That summer of 1938 the twenty-three surviving members of Seattle's Negro Company began planning a new production. Although they had cursory supervision from Edwin O'Connor [local FTP's last artistic director], they were now creating their own work and making their own artistic decisions. They chose for this venture the life and poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, widely acclaimed as America's first African-American poet...
Selected poems were set to music, and organized into a framework to tell Dunbar's story. A draft took shape, but the performance space was a problem: what had become the home of Seattle's Federal Theatre was a cramped former movie house in an unfavorable location.
O'Connor was impressed enough by the work in progress to commit funds to renting a downtown Seattle theatre. Anticipating performance in a space that allowed more possiblities, the company began final revisions to the script and overall production.
...[actor/director Joe] Staton made the final casting decisions himself, and the company continued to revise and polish the script and score. They sought out "old-timers" in the community and questioned them about church behavior in the ante bellum South as well as dance steps and manners. Staton found a former chain gang member who talked to them about call and response singing. In late October they completed a third major revision based upon actors' suggestions and improvisations, and [composer/music director] Howard Biggs wrote additional music to cover some of the more complicated transition moments. "An Evening With Dunbar is really beautiful," O'Connor wrote to [West region FTP director] Howard Miller. What's more, it had the largest advance sales of any production since they had moved into their consolidated home.
They opened on October 31, 1938 to lavish critical praise. Reviewers commented on the rich ensemble playing as well as individual performers... But it was Biggs who received the most attention, not only for the orchestrations but his superb direction of the choir. "Thunderous was the applause that greeted Howard Biggs who wrote the music and conducted the thirty-piece band during the play. His conducting of the chorus was also a thing of beauty to watch..." Biggs was finally recognized for the impressive work that he had been doing on the Project... Reviews also commented on the spirited staging, the wonderful party scene complete with dazzling costumes and Staton's direction.
Even so—and, sadly, predictable for the times—"every reviewer undercut the production by linking its success to the Negro stereotypes which had haunted the company from the outset." Among Witham's quotes:
... of humor there is aplenty in an entirely unprecedented party scene, in the unaffectedly joyous antics of several budding character artists and other bits that ring true to a typical funsome Negro – because the entire offering is arranged, acted, sung and played by negroes, giving vent to their natural flair for "play actin'" and to their natural love of idolization.
The program credited Joe Staton as director, "under the supervision of Edwin G. O'Connor." In the official production report filed with the national office, Staton was designated "assistant director."
Witham acknowledges that O'Connor as artistic director would have had strong influence over every phase of production. And while O'Connor seems to have been supportive of the Negro Company, the minimal credit they received for their own hard work was part of a pattern:
...it is dispiriting to see the ways in which their accomplishments were demeaned, undervalued or appropriated at the very moment that they had created an original work, a work rooted in three years of ensemble playing and the individual talents of this very unique group. As long as they were the Negro stereotypes happily playing out the natural abilities of their race, however, it seemed difficult to recognize them for what they had become: a truly talented company enacting Hallie Flanagan's original fantasy of what Federal Theatre might be.
By 1939 opponents had succeeded in defunding the program. While some of the rhetoric may have been more elaborate than that of our more recent de-funders of art, the sentiment is familiar. Witham quotes critic George Jean Nathan in 1938:
at least three-quarters of the younger people who have been living off it are spongers and grafters and no more deserving of charity from this particular source than they are deserving of Civil War pensions or Congressional dispensations of pate de foie gras. They have clearly demonstrated that they have nothing to give to the theatre — whether in the way of playwriting, producing, acting or scene painting — beyond a puissant and understandable itch to shine in easy and romantic jobs. With no faintest competence whatsoever, and infinitely better suited to humbler and more prosaic work, they are simply stagestruck and theatre struck loafers, and the Federal Theatre Project recklessly affords them opportunity to pleasure their fatuous whim.
In the end,
Federal Theatre did not fail. It was stopped... By many criteria it succeeded beyond expectations, perhaps even beyond Hallie Flanagan's. In a depressed economy... the Arts Projects... provided jobs for the workers in the arts just as its parent organization, WPA, provided jobs for workers on the roads and in the forests. In dozens of cities across the United States actors, directors, designers and stage hands were paid a weekly wage by the federal government to produce plays. And thousands of those plays were shown free to their audiences. Other productions had modest admission fees, fees that were eventually funneled into production costs. For a program that was routinely characterized in the press and public media as "boondoggling," it is instructive to remember that federal theatres earned $2,018,775 at their box offices.
It was a national theatre not only because it was located in many states but because it aspired to reach out to a wider audience and to represent their experiences on stage. Children, workers, Jews, Hispanics and African Americans were all part of the vision and the demographics of the Federal Theatre... The Negro units, in spite of the controversy surrounding their leadership and conrol, were groud-breaking institutions in the American theatre whose influence and accomplishments are still being evaluated.
From Witham's post-mortem on the local Project:
...Federal Theatre in Seattle never discovered (or perhaps agreed on) who its audience was... Many of the well-established "New Dealers"... were opposed to socio-political issues... Others, such as Florence James, however, wanted a theatre more in keeping with Flanagan's often-stated notion of a relevant and committed institution. And many others were content with box office and good show business regardless of the politics involved... The repertory reflects the tensions. With a powerful Negro Company, what could have been a more exciting choice than Big White Fog, for example? But each time it was considered it was ultimately discarded in favor of something with more song and dance.
Of real importance, Witham concludes, was that
Federal Theatre made a space for actors to perform for audiences in a time and place where they weren't before... their achievement was that they were there, and they were paid for their labor with a modest salary, audience approval and their own self-respect.
A look at WPA posters done for theatre projects around the country suggests that, along with vaudeville and circus, was some intriguing work.
There must have been imaginative shows in New Orleans, judging from the posters:
There may be material about that city's program not easily accessible, or perhaps not much of a record survived. The
Library of Congress, which holds these posters, seems to have conflated its "LA"s, labeling the posters as part of the "California Federal Art Project."
It's unfortunate that productions took place in an era when they weren't going to be recorded for future generations. At least the history of Seattle's program is well-documented, and Witham has made good use of the record in this valuable work.
Of resources available, UW theater arts program articles (based on Witham's book) include:
Theatre Arts in the Great Depression
Federal Theatre Project in Washington State
Negro Repertory Company
Washington State History Link:
Federal Theatre Project
Negro Repertory Company
From UW American history professor, Quintard Taylor's site:
Negro Repertory Company (Seattle) 1936-1939
Theodore Browne
After writing for the Negro Repertory Company, Browne ["Brown" in Witham's book] moved east, where he became a founding member of the Harlem Playwrights Company in the 1940s and later an academic.
Howard Biggs worked in New York in various roles as pianist/composer/arranger/music director for a number of R&B, doo-wop and jazz performers.
This bio has an inexplicably cutesy tone, but it does give a sense of the
range of Biggs' career by the 1950s.
It appears that Biggs and Browne were the only alumni of Seattle's Negro Company to establish careers in performing arts. As young men the FTP had given them the opportunity to create and be paid for their work. And the FTP enabled them to do this "in a time and place where they weren't before."
