Download or read book Furious Improvisation How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times written by Susan Quinn and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2021-06-07 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the direction of Hallie Flanagan, a daring 5-foot dynamo, the Federal Theater Project managed to turn a WPA relief program into a platform for some of the most cutting-edge theater of its time. This unique experiment by the US government in support of the arts electrified audiences with exciting, controversial productions, created by some of the greatest figures in 20th century American arts — including Orson Welles, John Houseman and Sinclair Lewis. Plays like Voodoo Macbeth and The Cradle Will Rock stirred up politicians by defying segregation and putting the spotlight on the inequities that led to the Great Depression. Furious Improvisation brings to life the challenges of this desperate era when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt and the tough-talking idealist Harry Hopkins furiously improvised programs to get millions of hungry, unemployed people back to work. Quinn’s compelling story of politics and creativity reaches a dramatic climax with the entrance of Martin Dies and his newly formed House Un-American Activities Committee, which turned the Federal Theatre Project into the first victim of a Red scare that would roil the nation for decades to come. “Insightful, judiciously selective history of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), the most controversial branch of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA)... With careful attention to the underlying political and cultural issues, Quinn cogently retells this sad story of ‘a brief time in our history [when] Americans had a vibrant national theatre almost by accident.’“ — Kirkus “[A] fascinating new book that describes a rare happy marriage between art and government.” — Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, National Public Radio “Quinn 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 describes eloquently and artfully... a not-so-distant time when a nation bled and great artists rushed as healers into the countryside.” — Publishers Weekly “Quinn skillfully weaves together the cultural, political, personal and theatrical events that shaped the course of the [Federal Theatre Project]... Quinn enriches the prevalent narrative of FTP history... with her thorough analysis of key events outside the theatres.” — Theatre Survey “An energetic and adeptly detailed account of the remarkable achievements of the Federal Theatre Project... Much more than the sum of its fascinating parts.” — Booklist “[A]n excellent book, a model of narrative history...” — Scott Eyman, The Observer “Quinn’s well-written narrative is both fascinating and frightening as politics and idealism come to metaphorical blows with the rise of Martin Dies.” — Library Journal “Susan Quinn has gifted us with a key moment in the history of F.D.R’s New Deal. Especially thrilling and revelatory is the work of the Arts Project of the WPA. Not only were there rakes and shovels, jobs and food for family, there was exhilarating and hopeful theatre, music, and painting, lifting our spirits. They gave us all hope.” — Studs Terkel “This fine book combines elements of political history, theater lore, and a saga of social justice. In showing us a rare triumph of bold artists in league with brave public servants, Quinn rescues the idea that the imagination and government can be friends instead of strangers. Our times are desperate, too, and Furious Improvisation comes at just the right moment.” — James Carroll, author of House of War and Constantine’s Sword “Susan Quinn’s Furious Improvisation is a fascinating account of a fleeting moment in American history when the US government felt some obligation to provide work for its more indigent citizens, including artists. Hallie Flanagan, the heroine of this book, emerges as a true saint of the theatre — passionate, visionary, and inspired. Well written and thoroughly engrossing.” — Robert Brustein, Founder, Yale Repertory Theatre and American Repertory Theatre “With a cast of period icons ranging from Harry Hopkins to Orson Welles, Quinn’s fast-paced, highly readable narrative exposes the myriad ‘isms’ — racism, sexism, communism, fascism — defying the birthright of a young democracy whose survival was still very much in question. A provocative reminder of how consistent national conflicts remain.” — Diane McWhorther, author of Carry Me Home “Anyone interested in how theatre can make a difference in the world should read this book. Susan Quinn inspires us with the courage of Hallie Flanagan and her fellow artists, showing how theatre can be both life sustaining and dangerous — and have a huge impact on the political landscape.” — Tina Packer, Founder of Shakespeare & Company

Download or read book The Federal Theatre Project in the American South written by Cecelia Moore and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Federal Theatre Project in the American South introduces the people and projects that shaped the regional identity of the Federal Theatre Project. When college theatre director Hallie Flanagan became head of this New Deal era jobs program in 1935, she envisioned a national theatre comprised of a network of theatres across the country. A regional approach was more than organizational; it was a conceptual model for a national art. Flanagan was part of the little theatre movement that had already developed a new American drama drawn from the distinctive heritage of each region and which they believed would, collectively, illustrate a national identity. The Federal Theatre plan relied on a successful regional model – the folk drama program at the University of North Carolina, led by Frederick Koch and Paul Green. Through a unique partnership of public university, private philanthropy and community participation, Koch had developed a successful playwriting program and extension service that built community theatres throughout the state. North Carolina, along with the rest of the Southern region, seemed an unpromising place for government theatre. Racial segregation and conservative politics limited the Federal Theatre’s ability to experiment with new ideas in the region. Yet in North Carolina, the Project thrived. Amateur drama units became vibrant community theatres where whites and African Americans worked together. Project personnel launched The Lost Colony, one of the first so-called outdoor historical dramas that would become its own movement. The Federal Theatre sent unemployed dramatists, including future novelist Betty Smith, to the university to work with Koch and Green. They joined other playwrights, including African American writer Zora Neale Hurston, who came to North Carolina because of their own interest in folk drama. Their experience, told in this book, is a backdrop for each successive generation’s debates over government, cultural expression, art and identity in the American nation.

Download or read book The WPA written by Sandra Opdycke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Established in 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was one of the most ambitious federal jobs programs ever created in the U.S. At its peak, the program provided work for almost 3.5 million Americans, employing more than 8 million people across its eight-year history in projects ranging from constructing public buildings and roads to collecting oral histories and painting murals. The story of the WPA provides a perfect entry point into the history of the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the early years of World War II, while its example remains relevant today as the debate over government's role in the economy continues. In this concise narrative, supplemented by primary documents and an engaging companion website, Sandra Opdycke explains the national crisis from which the WPA emerged, traces the program's history, and explores what it tells us about American society in the 1930s and 1940s. Covering central themes including the politics, race, class, gender, and the coming of World War II, The WPA: Creating Jobs During the Great Depression introduces readers to a key period of crisis and change in U.S. history.

Download or read book Subsidizing Culture written by James T. Bennett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the American mind, state subsidization of writers and artists was long associated with monarchies and, in later years, socialist states. The support these regimes gave to intellectuals was understood to come with a cost, yet, beginning with the New Deal's Federal Writers', Art, and Theater Projects, a new policy consensus asserted that by offering financial support to the arts, the federal government was affirming their importance to the nation.Subsidizing Culture examines the development of and controversies surrounding federal programs that directly benefit writers, artists, and intellectuals. James T. Bennett examines four cases of such support: the New Deal's Federal Writers', Art, and Theater Projects; the vigorous promotion, in the post-World War II and early Cold War eras, of abstract expressionism and other forms of modern art by the US government; the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which has fortified its position as the preeminent arts bureaucracy; and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the NEA's less embattled twin, which funnels monies to scholars.Bennett concentrates on the creation of and the debate over these government programs, and he gives special attention to the critics, who are usually ignored. He reminds us that the chorus of anti-subsidy voices over the years has included such disparate figures as writers William Faulkner and John Updike; artists John Sloan and Wheeler Williams; and social critics Jacques Barzun and H.L. Mencken.

Download or read book The Animal Game written by Daniel E. Bender and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-07 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the global trade and trafficking in animals that supplied U.S. zoos, Daniel Bender shows how Americans learned to view faraway places through the lens of exotic creatures on display. He recounts the public’s conflicted relationship with zoos, decried as prisons by activists even as they remain popular centers of education and preservation.

Download or read book Democratic Art written by Sharon Ann Musher and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-05-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At its height in 1935, the New Deal devoted roughly $27 million ($320 million today) to supporting tens of thousands of needy writers, dancers, actors, musicians, and visual artists, who created over 100,000 worksbooks, murals, plays, concertsthat were performed for or otherwise imbibed by millions of Americans. But why did the government get so involved with the arts in the first place? Musher addresses this question and many others by exploring the political and aesthetic concerns of the 1930s, as well as the range of responsesfrom politicians, intellectuals, artists, and taxpayersto the idea of active government involvement in the arts. In the process, she raises vital questions about the roles that the arts should play in contemporary society."

Download or read book Improvising the Curriculum written by Michael Corbett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-10 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Equipped with cultural tools like cell phones, computers and video cameras, youth are called upon to improvise and construct themselves symbolically in a continuously connected world; yet new teachers and students are still expected to learn and deliver standardized, placeless forms of scripted curriculum. This volume argues for improvisation as an approach to curriculum that recognizes the fundamentally creative aspects of learning that are often marginalized in communities of disadvantage. It provides interesting possibilities for schools that are working hard to keep up with technological, economic and cultural change, and argues for an improvised middle ground between structure and creativity. This volume outlines a two-year research project performed in a Canadian middle school, where school staff used student filmmaking as a way to expand teachers’ conceptions of literacy. It analyzes the response of students and parents as well as the student teachers that brought the program to the school. The improvisational techniques used while making the films paved the way for larger benefits of curricular improvisation to be explored.

Download or read book The Fight for the Four Freedoms written by Harvey J. Kaye and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On January 6, 1941, the Greatest Generation gave voice to its founding principles, the Four Freedoms: Freedom from want and from fear. Freedom of speech and religion. In the name of the Four Freedoms they fought the Great Depression. In the name of the Four Freedoms they defeated the Axis powers. In the process they made the United States the richest and most powerful country on Earth. And, despite a powerful, reactionary opposition, the men and women of the Greatest Generation made America freer, more equal, and more democratic than ever before. Now, when all they fought for is under siege, we need to remember their full achievement, and, so armed, take up again the fight for the Four Freedoms.

Download or read book The SAGE Encyclopedia of Economics and Society written by Frederick F. Wherry and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 1984 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economics is the nexus and engine that runs society, affecting societal well-being, raising standards of living when economies prosper or lowering citizens through class structures when economies perform poorly. Our society only has to witness the booms and busts of the past decade to see how economics profoundly affects the cores of societies around the world. From a household budget to international trade, economics ranges from the micro- to the macro-level. It relates to a breadth of social science disciplines that help describe the content of the proposed encyclopedia, which will explicitly approach economics through varied disciplinary lenses. Although there are encyclopedias of covering economics (especially classic economic theory and history), the SAGE Encyclopedia of Economics and Society emphasizes the contemporary world, contemporary issues, and society. Features: 4 volumes with approximately 800 signed articles ranging from 1,000 to 5,000 words each are presented in a choice of print or electronic editions Organized A-to-Z with a thematic Reader's Guide in the front matter groups related entries Articles conclude with References & Future Readings to guide students to the next step on their research journeys Cross-references between and among articles combine with a thorough Index and the Reader's Guide to enhance search-and-browse in the electronic version Pedagogical elements include a Chronology of Economics and Society, Resource Guide, and Glossary This academic, multi-author reference work will serve as a general, non-technical resource for students and researchers within social science programs who seek to better understand economics through a contemporary lens.

Download or read book Fair Play Art Performance and Neoliberalism written by J. Harvie and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book asks what is the quality of participation in contemporary art and performance? Has it been damaged by cultural policies which have 'entrepreneurialized' artists, cut arts funding and cultivated corporate philanthropy? Has it been fortified by crowdfunding, pop-ups and craftsmanship? And how can it help us to understand social welfare?

Download or read book Gale Researcher Guide for The Great Depression and the WPA written by Wes Borucki and published by Gale, Cengage Learning . This book was released on with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gale Researcher Guide for: The Great Depression and the WPA is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.

Download or read book Bernstein Meets Broadway written by Carol J. Oja and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-25 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2015 Music in American Culture Award from the American Musicological Society When Leonard Bernstein first arrived in New York City, he was an unknown artist working with other brilliant twentysomethings, notably Jerome Robbins, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green. By the end of the 1940s, these artists were world famous. Their collaborations defied artistic boundaries and subtly pushed a progressive political agenda, altering the landscape of musical theater, ballet, and nightclub comedy. In Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War, award-winning author and scholar Carol J. Oja examines the early days of Bernstein's career during World War II, centering around the debut in 1944 of the Broadway musical On the Town and the ballet Fancy Free. As a composer and conductor, Bernstein experienced a meteoric rise to fame, thanks in no small part to his visionary colleagues. Together, they focused on urban contemporary life and popular culture, featuring as heroes the itinerant sailors who bore the brunt of military service. They were provocative both artistically and politically. In a time of race riots and Japanese internment camps, Bernstein and his collaborators featured African American performers and a Japanese American ballerina, staging a model of racial integration. Rather than accepting traditional distinctions between high and low art, Bernstein's music was wide-open, inspired by everything from opera and jazz to cartoons. Oja shapes a wide-ranging cultural history that captures a tumultuous moment in time. Bernstein Meets Broadway is an indispensable work for fans of Broadway musicals, dance, and American performance history.

Download or read book Berkeley and the New Deal written by Harvey L. Smith and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Berkeleys 1930s and early 1940s New Deal structures and projects left a lasting legacy of utilitarian and beautiful infrastructure. These public buildings, schools, parks, and artworks helped shape the city and thus the lives of its residents; it is hard to imagine Berkeley without them. The artists and architects of these projects mention several themes: working for the community, responsibility, the importance of government support, collaboration, and creating a cultural renaissance. These New Deal projects, however, can be called hidden history because their legacies have been mostly ignored and forgotten. Comprehending the impact of the New Deal on one American city is only possible when viewed as a whole. Berkeley might have gotten a little more or a little less New Deal funding than other towns, but this time it wasnt Bezerkeley but very much typical and mainstream. More than history, this book shows the periods relevance to todays social, political, and economic realities. The times may again call for comprehensive public policy that reaches Main Street.

Download or read book Ben Shahn s New Deal Murals written by Diana L. Linden and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lithuanian-born artist Ben Shahn learned fresco painting as an assistant to Diego Rivera in the 1930s and created his own visually powerful, technically sophisticated, and stylistically innovative artworks as part of the New Deal Arts Project’s national mural program. In Ben Shahn’s New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene author Diana L. Linden demonstrates that Shahn mined his Jewish heritage and left-leaning politics for his style and subject matter, offering insight into his murals’ creation and their sometimes complicated reception by officials, the public, and the press. In four chapters, Linden presents case studies of select Shahn murals that were created from 1933 to 1943 and are located in public buildings in New York, New Jersey, and Missouri. She studies Shahn’s famous untitled fresco for the Jersey Homesteads—a utopian socialist cooperative community populated with former Jewish garment workers and funded under the New Deal—Shahn’s mural for the Bronx Central Post Office, a fresco Shahn proposed to the post office in St. Louis, and a related one-panel easel painting titled The First Amendment located in a Queens, New York, post office. By investigating the role of Jewish identity in Shahn’s works, Linden considers the artist’s responses to important issues of the era, such as President Roosevelt’s opposition to open immigration to the United States, New York’s bustling garment industry and its labor unions, ideological concerns about freedom and liberty that had signifcant meaning to Jews, and the encroachment of censorship into American art. Linden shows that throughout his public murals, Shahn literally painted Jews into the American scene with his subjects, themes, and compositions. Readers interested in Jewish American history, art history, and Depression-era American culture will enjoy this insightful volume.

Download or read book Identity Culture and the Science Performance Volume 2 written by Vivian Appler and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-10-05 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 2 of Identity, Culture, and the Science Performance investigates performances that illuminate the hidden recesses and inscrutable mysteries of the natural and human-made worlds. While the first volume of this series prioritizes public, outward-facing, and activist work at the intersections of art and science, this volume considers performances of localized, concealed, inexplicable, or intimate phenomena, from the closed-door procedures of biomedical trials to the impacts of climate change. Interdisciplinary science dialogues have long been shaped by the cultures and identity communities in which they arise and circulate. The essays, interviews, and creative works included here not only expose the historical and contemporary harms created by exclusive and prejudicial processes in art and science, they also contemplate how a diverse, inclusive body of science performers might help deepen how we “see” the unseen forces of our universe, contribute to novel scientific understandings, and disrupt disciplinary hierarchies long dominated by white men of privilege. This collection expands upon extant scholarship on theatre and science by foregrounding identity as a crucial thematic and representational element within past and present performances of science. Featuring interviews with science-integrative artists such as Lauren Gundersen (The Half-Life of Marie Curie) and Kim TallBear (Native American DNA) as well as creative works by playwrights Chantal Bilodeau and Claudia Barnett, among others, Identity, Culture, and the Science Performance, Volume 2: From the Curious to the Quantum proposes shifts in perspective and procedure necessary to establish and maintain sustainable cultures of science and art.

Download or read book Katherine Dunham written by Joanna Dee Das and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-17 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most important dance artists of the twentieth century, dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) created works that thrilled audiences the world over. As an African American woman, she broke barriers of race and gender, most notably as the founder of an important dance company that toured the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia for several decades. Through both her company and her schools, she influenced generations of performers for years to come, from Alvin Ailey to Marlon Brando to Eartha Kitt. Dunham was also one of the first choreographers to conduct anthropological research about dance and translate her findings for the theatrical stage. Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora makes the argument that Dunham was more than a dancer-she was an intellectual and activist committed to using dance to fight for racial justice. Dunham saw dance as a tool of liberation, as a way for people of African descent to reclaim their history and forge a new future. She put her theories into motion not only through performance, but also through education, scholarship, travel, and choices about her own life. Author Joanna Dee Das examines how Dunham struggled to balance artistic dreams, personal desires, economic needs, and political commitments in the face of racism and sexism. The book analyzes Dunham's multiple spheres of engagement, assessing her dance performances as a form of black feminist protest while also presenting new material about her schools in New York and East St. Louis, her work in Haiti, and her network of interlocutors that included figures as diverse as ballet choreographer George Balanchine and Senegalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor. It traces Dunham's influence over the course of several decades from the New Negro Movement of the 1920s to the Black Power Movement of the late 1960s and beyond. By drawing on a vast, never-utilized trove of archival materials along with oral histories, choreographic analysis, and embodied research, Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora offers new insight about how this remarkable woman built political solidarity through the arts.

Download or read book Henry Alsberg written by Susan Rubenstein DeMasi and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-06-20 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Great Depression, Henry Alsberg, a journalist with a passion for social justice, directed the Federal Writers' Project, a New Deal program of the Works Progress Administration. Under his guidance, thousands of unemployed writers were hired. Despite attacks from the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Project produced more than 1,000 publications from 1935 to 1939, including the still highly acclaimed American Guide series. Some writers, such as Richard Wright, went on to storied careers. Alsberg led the Project's collection of more than 10,000 oral histories from ex-slaves, immigrants and others. Alsberg was also a leader in the struggle to save Jewish pogrom survivors in Eastern Europe. Later, he initiated the first major effort to assist international political prisoners. His friends included anarchist revolutionary Emma Goldman and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. This book brings Alsberg to light as an important but forgotten figure of the 20th century.