Records from the Great Depression
Cath Madden Trindle
Federal Theatre Project (WPA)
1935-1939 NARA RG 69.5.4
 |
| Poster for Federal Theatre Project presentation of a “Festival of American Dance” featuring “An American Exodus” at the Alcazar, showing a man and a woman dancing. (LOC Collections) |
The
primary goal of the Federal Theatre Project was to implement the reemployment
of theater workers who were on public relief rolls, including actors,
directors, playwrights, designers, vaudeville artists, and stage technicians.
A secondary goal was to make theater a vital part of community life, an
art form that would continue to function after the FTP program was completed.
Theater
projects were set up in towns where a number of theater professionals were
unemployed. At its largest, the Federal Theatre Project employed around
12,700 people. Over 90% of these employees came from the relief rolls.
Ninety
percent of the FTP appropriation had to be spent on wages. About fifty per cent
of FTP personnel were actors. Others were writers, designers, theater
musicians, dancers, stage hands, box office staff, ushers, maintenance workers,
and the business personnel necessary to operate the program in a way that would
meet government standards. There were theater companies in some forty
cities in twenty two states. In order to reach the more rural areas some of the
companies toured. Classic plays shared the stage with those newly written
for the project, puppet shows, dance reviews, children’s theater, ethnic
theater, foreign plays and more.
 |
| Photographic Print from San Francisco production of Power. Finding Aid Box 1182. |
Among the
largest theater companies was the one in Los Angeles. San Francisco and
San Diego also had companies.
The University of Southern California and UCLA both have
collections of scripts and other items relating to the theater project in the
Los Angeles area. San Francisco Public Library history room has items relating
to the program on Treasure Island. UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library has photographs for SF Bay area productions. Check
the OAC for other materials available in California.
Collections
at the National Archives include among other things: correspondence, staging
blueprints, specifics on certain productions, over 25,000 photographs, drawings
and paintings of costumes and set designs, and posters.
The Federal Theatre Project
Collection (Finding Aid), housed in
the Library of Congress’ Performing Arts Reading Room,
contains correspondence, memoranda, play and radio scripts, reports, research
studies, manuals, publications, bulletins, forms, lists, newspaper clippings,
scrapbooks, charts, costume and set designs, blueprints, posters, addressograph
plates, photographs, negatives, slides, playbills, and other records
documenting the role of the Federal Theatre Project in laying the groundwork
during the New Deal years for much innovation in the theater. (LOC Guide – Federal Theatre Project). American
Memory – FTP.
