Humanities: Blog #21

In 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his team worked to create the Federal Theater Project, one of five artistic projects created under Roosevelt’s first term as president. Its goal was to encourage and promote theatrical events as they had vanished after the Great Depression and the stock market crash. It allowed unemployed theater professionals like actors, directors, playwrights, and others to find work. A hope for this project was to implement theater as a fundamental aspect of community that would survive long after the program was finished.

Importance to US History:

1. The Federal Theater Project was important to US history because it gave jobs to over ten thousand of unemployed workers in over forty states. This project did not just give people opportunities but made sure that it was available across the country to various out of work actors, designers, ushers, and others. It also promoted the arts within the United States at the project was assigned over six million dollars.

2. The Federal Theater Project also broke through racial barriers. They did not discriminate against races but allowed for all unemployed actors, ushers, designers, and others to have the chance at work. In fact there was a unit known as the Negro Theater Project that was implemented in twenty-three different cities within the country that gave the opportunities to African America theater workers.

Controversy:

1. The Craddle Will Rock, produced by John Houseman and Orson Wells, was advocating for pro union. This came at a time where strikes were taking place within the steel industry and was becoming violent. The government did not want this play to be made but the producers went through with it anyway. But they did not perform it in a theater funded by the project and they did not have any costumes and the actors sat in their seats as they performed the play as to not violate the agreement from their union. Because the government did not want the play performed it showed that the government still wanted control over the arts and what was being made.

2. There were also reports the Federal Theater Project was associated with the communist party. The House Un-American Activities Committee believed that the Federal Theater Project was promoting communism and fascism due to the plays questioning of government behavior , at a time when other countries around the world were faced with such problems. They did not want America to become the next victim.