Depression Makes Good Theatre

The story of the Federal Theatre Project is quite the epic tale. It was a product of

the Great Depression, born under the Works Progress Administration, part of the New

Deal, to create jobs for unemployed theatre artists. The Federal Theatre Project (FTP)

created jobs for actors, designers, stagehands, and directors. It provided theatrical

productions across the United States for people at low or no cost to the theatergoer, many

of who could no longer afford to attend theatre due to the economic climate of the time. It

also created theatre in areas that had not actually had theatre. It provided jobs for people

of all colors. It started careers of people who would go down as some of the most lauded

names in theatrical and film history. It even created new forms of theatre.

It seems a prudent idea to start with a bit of history to put the era and events

therein into context. Largely due to the aftereffects of World War I, the 1920s was a

decade "at once wildly creative, liberating, desperate, and reckless." (Axelrod 239)

Americans purchased stock in record numbers. This would be a good thing, except for the

fact that most of them bought large amounts of stock on margin, putting down as little as

ten cents per dollar of stock. They hoped that the stock prices would rise quickly and

drastically in order for them to pay off the substantial loans they undertook in order to

make the stock purchases. (238)

To make matters worse, while the buying power of the public declined, the

production numbers in many factories rose. Companies continued to make much more of

their products than people were buying. Since their items weren't selling, they started laying people off. People without jobs tend to purchase less than people with jobs, and so

the market base shrank. Oddly, stock prices continued to rise as more people purchased

stocks, predominantly on margin. (Axelrod 238) This was a bad thing.

As summer became fall in 1929, the prices in the stock market began to seesaw

uncontrollably. I imagine the unsteadiness of the market terrified a great many people,

especially the large number who had purchased their stocks on margin and had yet to

earn the purchase prices from them to pay their substantial loans. On October 24, a

selling spree began. On October 29, commonly referred to as Black Tuesday, the market

took a nosedive. Stockbrokers demanded immediate payment for the stocks people had

purchased on margin. Of course, no one actually had the money to pay. Thousands of

investors were suddenly penniless. There was an outbreak of suicides among

businessmen. (Axelrod 239) Banks ran out of money and closed left and right as people

across the nation hurried to retrieve their savings. The Great Depression had begun.

"After the Wall Street crash came, [President] Hoover was slow to react and did

nothing more than assure the public that 'prosperity was just around the corner,'" writes

Alan Axelrod in The Complete Idiot's Guide to American History. As time went on,

things only got worse. There was more poverty. There were more jobs being lost. Hoover

suggested that state and local governments should create programs to help the great many

people who were in need, but neither the state nor the local governments had the money

to do so. (242) People in all walks of life, in all industries, were affected.

The Great Depression continued as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took

office in 1932, but things were about to change.

3

When he accepted the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination,

Franklin D. Roosevelt declared, "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a

new deal for the American people." Following Roosevelt's

inauguration, the phrase "New Deal" caught on in a way that

transformed the federal government. Within the first three months of

the new administration - dubbed with Napoleonic grandeur by the

press the "Hundred Days" - FDR introduced his relief legislation. (243

- 244)

Among the "Alphabet Soup" of relief programs that were part of the New Deal was

the Federal Housing Authority, FHA; the Civil Works Administration, CWA; the

National Recovery Administration, NRA; and the Works Progress Administration,

later called the Works Projects Administration, WPA. (Robinson 7)

On January 21, 1935, House Joint Resolution 117 was introduced in Congress. It

was cited as the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. The resolution became

law on April 8, 1935, and the WPA was formed with a focus on helping to get manual

laborers back to work. (Federal Theatre Project Collection)

Of course it wasn't just factory workers and other manual laborers who were out

of work.

Of all the [people] to experience the effects of