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Publishers Weekly
Quinn (Marie Curie) does a superb job of recounting the rise and fall of the Federal Theatre Project, a wing of FDR's WPA meant to employ playwrights and actors while providing diversion and inspiration for Depression-ravaged Americans. Quinn shows how, under the management of the irrepressible Hallie Flanagan, the left-leaning FTP facilitated such controversial masterpieces as Triple-A Plowed Under and The Cradle Will Rock while unintentionally setting the stage for the House Un-American Activities Committee and much of the red-baiting and blacklisting of the 1940s and '50s. The Daily Worker applauded FTP projects such as a dramatization of Sinclair Lewis's antifascist novel, It Can't Happen Here. Among the actors, directors and writers sponsored by the program were John Houseman, Orson Welles, Will Geer and Meyer Levin. Experimentation thrived: Welles oversaw an all-black production of a "voodoo" version of Macbeth that played Broadway and toured nationwide. All of this Quinn describes eloquently and artfully, summoning a not-so-distant time when a nation bled and great artists rushed as healers into the countryside. B&w photos. (July)
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Overview
“Spotlight[s] one of the most compelling periods of American theater…Quinn’s well-written narrative is both fascinating and frightening.”—Library Journal (starred review)
In a desperate era, FDR and his advisers had to furiously improvise to get millions of unemployed people back to work. For writers, actors, and artists, they created the Federal Theater Project. A platform for cutting-edge drama, the program defied segregation, spotlighting social injustice and ultimately ...