Artsjournal.com posted an article from The Yale Review reviewing a book about the benefits the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) brought to Depression Era United States.  In addition to discussing these benefits the book’s author, James Shapiro, relates efforts to dismantle FTP by conservatives as an early manifestation of the culture war we experience today.

After reading about all the activity the FTP engaged in across the country, the reviewer Charlie Tyson notes that the budget was “less than 1% of the total funds allocated for federal work relief, or about the cost to build a battleship. Tyson notes that the cost to build an air craft carrier today is around $13 billion and challenges readers to think about what arts organizations and artists could do with that sort of money today.

What was most interesting was reading about the wide scope of activities the Federal Theater Project and the related Federal Dance Theater Project engaged in. If there was ever a time in the history of the US when artistic activity was viewed as populist rather than elitist, it was during the period of 1935 and 1939 when these projects were actively creating works. The works created weren’t just lighthearted fare. There were challenging pieces on topics like poverty, housing, racism, labor relations, and inequality.

The Living Newspaper program of the FTP addressed these topics and focused some criticism upon lawmakers by quoting statements made in the Congressional Record.  It is probably no surprise that legislators who were already opposed to FDR’s New Deal programs targeted works drawing a great amounts of attention to the uncomfortable issues of the day.

The funds distributed to artists through FTP provided for a significant amount of community engagement. To a certain extent there are probably lessons to be drawn today from the activities of artists 90 years ago.  One of the things cited by Tyson was how closely tailored to a target community some of the shows were:

“Unlike Hollywood, which delivered the same products to everyone, the Project was nimble, sensitive to local variation. For example, shows were staged in Spanish in Miami and Tampa and in Yiddish in New York. The Project gave directors license to adjust performances to satisfy local tastes; audiences in different cities might see differing versions of the same play.

A string of early successes established the Federal Theatre’s rep­utation. Its first hit was a production of Macbeth in Harlem, staged by one of the program’s so-called Negro Units. (The Federal Theatre was, at the time, Harlem’s largest employer.) To direct the production, the organization tapped Orson Welles, at that time a virtually unknown twenty-year-old actor with no professional directorial experience. The Harlem Macbeth—commonly known as the Voodoo Macbeth—traded Scottish gloom for Caribbean exot­icism. Set in nineteenth-century Haiti with a large all-Black cast and filled, in Shapiro’s words, with “drumming and spectacle,” the production was a sensation. It moved from Harlem to Broadway and then embarked on a national tour with stops in the Jim Crow South. The play reached roughly 120,000 people.

Many of the shows were performed for free. There are apparently pictures of thousands of people filling parks to watch performances. (Though I imagine many performances also occurred indoors). In total, it was estimated “…thirty million Americans—roughly a quarter of the population—attended Federal Theatre productions.”

Toward the end of the piece Tyson notes that there have been recent calls for more federal funding of non-profit theaters and cites a criticism that theaters have only themselves to blame for producing works with themes criticizing the social and political environment. But Tyson notes that theatrical performances have a long history of containing social messages from Victorian melodramas pointing out the plight of the poor to the social commentary of Federal Theater Project works through to today.