“The theater, when it is any good, can change things.” So said Hallie Flanagan, a theater professor tapped by the Roosevelt administration to create a taxpayer-funded national theater during the Depression, when a quarter of the country was out of work, including many actors, directors and other theater professionals. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * “The theater, when it is any good, can change things.
” So said Hallie Flanagan, a theater professor tapped by the Roosevelt administration to create a taxpayer-funded national theater during the Depression, when a quarter of the country was out of work, including many actors, directors and other theater professionals. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? “The theater, when it is any good, can change things.” So said Hallie Flanagan, a theater professor tapped by the Roosevelt administration to create a taxpayer-funded national theater during the Depression, when a quarter of the country was out of work, including many actors, directors and other theater professionals.
In an enthralling new book about this little-known chapter in American theater history, Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro examines the short, tragic life of the Federal Theatre Project. That was a New Deal program brought down by Martin Dies, a bigoted, ambitious, rabble-rousing East Texas congressman, with the help of his political allies and the media in a 1930s-er.
