A new Library of Congress exhibition, “Coast to Coast: The Federal Theatre Project, 1935–1939,” opened at the Performing Arts Reading Room on Feb. 17, 2011, and will remain on display through July 16, 2011.
- Prints and Photographs Division
The exhibition explores the period when the federal government created a cultural program to provide work for theater professionals who were jobless as a result of the Great Depression, which followed the stock-market crash of October 1929. The Federal Theatre Project employed photographers in every major city who recorded performances, rehearsals, and images of performers and also captured behind-the-scenes work, stage sets, costumes, audiences, and theaters. The exhibition features materials from the Library’s Federal Theatre Project Collection.
To learn more about the exhibition and to explore a sampling of more than 9,000 online images, go to http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/federaltheatre/.
About the Collection
The Federal Theatre Project Collection originally came to the Library between 1939 and 1946, with the largest segment transferred from the Washington office of the project’s administration in 1940. The entire collection, which fills 1,150 linear feet of space, had been on loan to George Mason University since 1974 for research, organization and description. The Fairfax, Va.-based university is credited with creating a register for the holdings.
- Prints and Photographs Division
The opening of the Library’s James Madison Building in 1980 allowed the development of a multipurpose Performing Arts Reading Room. As the access point for the vast and diverse collections in the custody of the Library’s Music Division, the Performing Arts Reading Room is where music, dance, theater and recorded-sound collections can be served in a central location on Capitol Hill.
The Federal Theatre Project Collection, which is housed in the Performing Arts Reading Room, was called back to the Library in the early 1990s by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, who cited preservation, security and access for researchers in recalling all outstanding Library loans. The collection was opened to the public in 1994.
About the Federal Theatre Project
Established under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the first term of the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) was a unique chapter in American history. Radical in concept, the FTP was the only large-scale effort undertaken by the federal government of the United States to organize and produce theater events. It had a brief life—from 1935 until 1939—but in that time the FTP presented an extraordinary number of theatrical productions across the United States. The productions encompassed virtually all types of performances, including opera, the classics, modern drama, puppet theater, vaudeville, circus, and dance performances.
- Prints and Photographs Division
The essential aim of the FTP was to provide salaried work for theater professionals unemployed as a result of the Great Depression. An equally important aim was to bring high-quality theatrical productions to both large cities and small towns across the U.S. at an affordable price, exposing many Americans to theater for the first time. These aims were drawn from an earlier federal drama project administered by the Civil Works Administration (CWA), which was established in New York in December 1933.
Funds were allocated for the FTP through federal legislation enacted on April 8, 1935. Theatrical producer, director, playwright, and author Hallie Flanagan (1890–1969) was appointed national director of the drama project and served during the project’s entire existence. Based on estimated theatrical unemployment, $6,784,036 was allotted to the FTP. With this funding committed, representatives of the FTP throughout the country created the considerable organizational structure necessary to see to all of the many administrative aspects of this vast new enterprise. Theater personnel were auditioned and the beginnings of the many theater groups were realized in cooperation with local WPA offices and with the United States Employment Service.
Congress ended funding for the program in 1939 following hearings into aspects of the project’s work. But precedent had been set: In later decades, the federal government played an important role in the nation’s cultural life through the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Additional Resources
Students and scholars may study the Federal Theatre Project Collection in conjunction with the many complementary collections from that era housed at the Library. These include the Federal Writers’ Project, the Works Progress Administration, the Farm Security Administration photographic archives and the Historic American Buildings Survey. In addition, scholars doing research in this field can consult the Library’s collections of copyright drama scripts, musical-theater materials and the papers of many directors, producers, actors and writers.
As part of its continuing efforts to make special collections from the Library widely accessible electronically, in 1997 the Library developed an online presentation titled “The New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939.” Part of the Library’s American Memory collections, the presentation offers more than 13,000 images from the Federal Theatre Collection. Researchers may also consult the Library’s guide to its online resources on the New Deal. A teacher’s guide for using the Library’s New Deal-era collections in the classroom is also online.
