The Federal Theatre Project (1935-1939)

 

[Though short-lived, the Federal Theatre Project was the largest effort by the United States Government to produce theatrical events.  It was an effort of the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945; 32nd President of the United States: 1933-45) to provide work for unemployed theater professionals during the Great Depression (1929-41) which followed the stock market crash of 24 October 1929, “Black Thursday.”

[The Federal Theatre Project was one of five arts-related projects, called Federal Project Number One, established under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during Roosevelt’s first term (4 March 1933-20 January 1937).  

[The WPA was created by executive order on 6 May 1935.  The five arts divisions were the Federal Music Project (FMP; established 6 May 1935), the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP; established, 27 August 1935), the Federal Theatre Project (FTP; established 27 August 1935), the Federal Art Project (FAP; established, 29 August 1935), and the Historical Records Survey (HRS; established as program of the FWP, 16 November 1935 – independent section of Federal One, 15 October 1936).

[While the primary aim of the FTP was the reemployment of theater workers on public relief rolls, including actors, directors, playwrights, designers, vaudeville artists, and stage technicians, it was also the hope that the project would result in the establishment of theater so vital to community life that it would continue to function as a “national theater” after the FTP program was completed. 

[This goal was never realized, although several attempts have been made since the New Deal era to create an “American National Theatre” in the United States.  The last attempt was probably Roger Stevens’s (1910-98) foray at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., of which he was founding Chairman, 1961-88.  With Peter Sellars (b. 1957) at the helm, the ANT lasted one ignominious season in 1985-86.

[(Back in 2016, in “Zelda Fichandler, Valiant Striver in the Arena,” posted on Rick On Theater in “Zelda Fichandler (1924-2016), Part 2” [20 October 2024], actor and teacher Andrew Weems [1961-2019] proposed redesignating our regional theaters collectively as our national theater.)

[I have just published a post called “America’s Culture War—Now at Your Local Theater” (25 October) which includes “America’s War on Theater” by Daniel Blank, the review of a new book by James Shapiro (The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War) that tells the story of the FTP as the target of anti-theater Americans.  That post gave me the impulse to post a history of the New Deal agency that produced Orson Welles’s Voodoo Macbeth, the Living Newspapers, Sinclair Lewis’s It Can't Happen Here, The Swing Mikado, Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, Dorothy and DuBose Heyward’s Porgy, plus dance dramas, foreign-language productions, and theater-oriented radio broadcasts.]

The 1929 stock market crash actually began in September when the prices of shares dropped precipitously on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and ended in the middle of November.  This launched the worst financial crisis in U.S.—and, indeed, world—history.

On 24 October 1929, known as Black Thursday, investors sold off a record number of shares, setting off a panic on Wall Street leading to a historic drop in the market’s value of 9%.  Over the next five days, culminating on 29 October, dubbed Black Tuesday, of a total loss of market value of another 25%. 

The reasons for the panic and the historic loss of market value are irrelevant here, and have been a subject of debate, analysis, and re-analysis by economists and financial historians for almost 100 years.  The upshot was, however, that the following Depression resulted in an estimated rate of unemployment of almost 25% at its height.  About 13 million Americans became unemployed out of a population, according to the 1930 census, of just under 123 million. 

President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964; 31st President of the United States: 1929-33) was widely blamed for an insufficient and inadequate response to the crisis and on election day, 8 November 1932, he was swept out of office in a landslide.  Roosevelt’s mandated economic recovery plan, on which he’d campaigned, the New Deal, instituted unprecedented programs for relief and recovery.

Major programs and agencies of Roosevelt’s New Deal included the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA), the Social Security Administration (SSA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which was the parent agency of the FTP.  Reforms were initiated in banking and finance, business and manufacturing, labor relations, the economy, and Wall Street.  By the end of Roosevelt’s first term, unemployment fell by two-thirds.

(The recovery from the Depression was ultimately accomplished by the huge surge in federal spending in the build-up for the U.S. entry into World War II.  Once the government began its wartime manufacture and purchase of military equipment and materiel, the New Deal recovery programs ended.  That, however, didn’t occur until years after the FTP was disbanded.)

The WPA, headed by FDR’s trusted adviser Harry Hopkins (1890-1946), provided paid employment to the jobless during the Great Depression while upgrading the country’s public infrastructure, such as parks, schools, roads, bridges, airports and railway stations, housing, public buildings like post offices, and the like.  

Though most of the jobs were in construction and went to unskilled or low-skilled workers, the New Deal, as already noted, also found work for artists.  This was under the auspices of Federal Project Number One—known as Federal One or just Fed One. 

Those public buildings, for instance, were decorated with murals and painted ceilings, and statuary depicting national and local history, culture, and lore.  Those artworks, by the Federal Art Project, can still be seen today in the post offices and other public facilities from the WPA period (1935-43) that still stand.

The Historical Records Survey, which started as a section of the Federal Writers’ Project, employed many interviewers to collect the life stories of former slaves in the South.  These narratives are of immense importance to American history.  (Playwright, scholar, and English professor James de Jongh [1942-2023] drew the text for his 1978 play, Do Lord Remember Me, from the WPA slave narratives.  See “Two Theater Personages of Note: James de Jongh (1942-2023),” 12 June 2023.)

Theater and music groups toured throughout the United States and gave more than 225,000 performances.  I’ll be discussing the Federal Theatre Project in more detail shortly, but a word or two more about the Federal Music Project.

The employees of the FMP, along with the thousands of concerts they performed, taught music classes, offered training for music teachers, and hosted music festivals.  More interestingly, they researched and collected traditional American music and folk songs from around the country, including the music of black Americans, Latinés, and Creole-speakers.  These songs were also put on records to preserve what would otherwise have been lost.  (The recordings are in the Library of Congress, as are the unpublished slave-narrative manuscripts.)

The FTP is arguably one of the best known of the five Fed One divisions, along, perhaps, with the FAP—largely, I suspect, because the evidence of its work is still visible around the country.  (The post office in downtown San Antonio, Texas, near the Alamo, is, itself, a tourist stop because of the murals depicting Texas history in its entrance lobby.)  As we shall also see, FTP was also the WPA’s most controversial and provocative program.

WPA administrator Harry Hopkins knew a young Vassar College teacher who was an avid student of contemporary theater and was developing some ideas about experimental theater.  Her name was Hallie Flanagan (1889-1969) and she had already been appointed the director of the actors’ group of George Pierce Baker’s (1866-1935) renowned 47 Workshop dramatic production studio at Harvard College.  Flanagan was a student at Radcliffe, the women’s college of Harvard University, but Baker’s theater courses were open to students at both institutions.  (The appointment to the director’s position was made by Baker, himself.)

In 1924, Flanagan was hired to direct the division of speech in the English department at Vassar in Poughkeepsie, New York.  (There was no theater program, so all drama courses and activities were conducted in the English department.)  In 1926, however, Flanagan left Vassar when she became the first woman to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

For 14 months in 1926-27, Flanagan traveled around Europe to study the theater practices on the Continent.  While doing so, she met some of the most influential figures in modern theater including John Galsworthy (English novelist and playwright; 1867-1933), Konstantin Stanislavsky (Russian actor, director, teacher, and theorist; 1863-1938), Edward Gordon Craig (English actor, director, and scenic designer; 1872-1966), and Lady Gregory (Anglo-Irish dramatist, folklorist, and theater manager; 1852-1932).  Later, she wrote Shifting Scenes of the Modern European Theater (1928) based on her experiences.

When she returned to Vassar in 1927, Flanagan launched the Vassar Experimental Theatre, where she introduced the new ideas she picked up in Europe.  Her first production at the new theater was Anton Chekhov’s The Marriage Proposal, which took place on the evening of 12 November 1927.  Chekhov (1860-1904) was, by the 1920s, a staple of American theater, and the “experimental” element in Flanagan’s production came not from its text but from Flanagan’s staging.  The company performed the 1890 one-act play three times: first, in a Realistic style; next, in an Expressionist style; and last, in a Constructivist style.

(Constructivism is an early 20th-century—that is, 1920s-’30s—Russian movement in art and architecture, as well as stage design, characterized by the creation of nonrepresentational geometric objects using industrial materials.  The theatrical metaphor was that the stage set was a “machine for acting” rather than a Realistic, or even Expressionistic representation of an actual place.  In constructivistic acting and movement, the body is used so as to approximate a machine or an automaton.  Meyerhold’s “biomechanics” [note below] are a manifestation of Constructivism.)

In the second version, played closer to tragedy, the actors were masked, and in the third the actors were all dressed in work suits in a playground, tossing a ball between them.  The third version sounds a lot like the biomechanics exercises of Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940), the Russian and Soviet theater director, actor, and theatrical experimentalist, but the second iteration of the play is reminiscent of the work of Russian actor, director, teacher, and theorist Michael Chekhov (1891-1955), nephew of Anton and director, at the time of Flanagan’s trip to Europe, which included Russia, of the Second Moscow Art Theater.

We know that Flanagan met Stanislavsky, the father of modern Western acting and the founder and director of the Moscow Art Theater.  Stanislavsky and MAT were world-renowned for their interpretations of Chekhov’s plays, famously in a Realistic style, and she might have met Meyerhold as well.  

It seems likely, though, that she’d have also met Michael Chekhov, whose acting and directing were the talk of the Moscow and Saint Petersburg theater scene, especially after his groundbreaking Expressionistic Hamlet which had premièred in 1924.  (See “Michael Chekhov” on this blog [2, 5, and 8 November 2019], especially Part 2.)  

(In MAT practice, plays that have been successful remained in the repertoire for years and were frequently revived.  It’s possible that performances of Michael Chekhov’s Hamlet were on the MAT 2 stage when Flanagan was in Moscow.)

Chekhov, however, was under serious political attack by the government of Joseph Stalin (1878-1953; General Secretary of the Communist Party: 1922-52; Chairman of the Council of Ministers: 1941-53) by 1926.  He and his wife left Moscow ahead of an expected arrest warrant in July 1928.  They stayed in Germany until 1931, when they moved to Paris.  After a brief sojourn in Lithuania and Latvia, he set up a school in England in 1936, and then, with the advent of World War II in Europe looming, he decamped with his school and many of his students for the United States in 1938.  (The war broke out in Europe on 1 September 1939.)

In 1931, Flanagan attracted national attention for mounting Can You Hear Their Voices? A Play of Our Time, a play she co-adapted from the short story, published in the American Marxist magazine closely associated with the Communist Party USA New Masses, “Can You Make Out Their Voices” (6.10 [March 1931]) by Whittaker Chambers (1901-61).  (If the writer’s name looks familiar, that may be because he’s the former Soviet spy who later defected and informed on the espionage cell that included Alger Hiss [1904-96], who was subpoenaed to testify before HUAC in 1948 and was ultimately convicted of perjury.)

Can You Hear Their Voices? a 70-minute one-act, premièred at Vassar on 2 May 1931.  (It ran Off-Off-Broadway June 3-27, 2010 in a production by the Peculiar Works Project in what Variety dubbed “A Pop-Up Space”: “a nondescript storefront space wedged between the toes of the overbearing NYU footprint in Noho” [2 Great Jones Street, at Broadway].  Reviewer Marilyn Stasio asserted in Variety that “it foreshadowed the Living Newspaper productions that defined Flanagan’s political agenda as head of the Federal Theater Project.  As it was during the Depression, the raw material is dynamite” (“Can You Hear Their Voices?” 7 June 2010).

As recorded in Wikipedia, the February 1932 issue of the Vassar Miscellany News, then the semi-weekly student paper, stated that after the unknown play premièred the previous May, “the fame of this propaganda play has spread not only throughout America, but over Europe and into Russia, China, and Japan” (“Vassar Drama Arouses World-wide Interest,” 16.26 [24 February 1932]).

New Masses reviewed the play in June 1931 (Frances Strauss, “Vassar College Presents A Play,” vol. 7, no. 1), then proceeded to advertise the play’s availability in book form in the June, July, and August 1931 issues, reporting requests for the rights from parties from all around the globe.

In September 1935, WPA head Hopkins, who knew Flanagan from Grinnell College (Grinnell, Iowa) when they were both undergraduates—Flanagan was class of ’11; Hopkins, class of ’12—and had read her 1928 book, asked Flanagan to lead the Federal Theatre Project.

Of course, FTP was controversial from the start as soon as Flanagan’s appointment was announced, given her apparent left-leaning political preferences.  (I say “apparent” because in the ’20s and ’30s, an attraction to Russian theater innovations, from Constructivism to Meyerhold and Michael Chekhov, as well as an affinity for European experimentalism, which would include the Epic Theater techniques of Bertold Brecht—another commie!—would have been de rigueur for a committed theater-maker.)

But, as James Shapiro, author of The Playbook (see “America’s Culture War—Now at Your Local Theater,” referenced in the introduction above), points out, “anti-theatricalism” is part of America’s political make-up, especially on the right.  Theater, for some reason, is always suspect to a certain segment of our population; it’s an off-shoot of American anti-intellectualism.

Marry that to Hallie Flanagan’s résumé and you’ve got a stink bomb ready to go off.  It eventually did.

Meanwhile, the FTP provided a pretty wide variety of programs, in part because under its heading came also dance and radio.  I’m going to focus on the theater, but here’s a run-down of some of the other FTP programs.

The Federal Dance Project (also sometimes called the Federal Dance Theatre) was a short-lived unit of the FTP.  Formed in January 1936, it was originally a semi-autonomous component of the Federal Theatre Project, but lobbying by New York City dancers, under the leadership of Helen Tamiris (choreographer, modern dancer, and teacher; 1905-66), led to the creation of a separate dance unit, the Federal Dance Project. 

The FDP employed professional dancers, choreographers, musicians, designers, and technicians, and set before them the task of producing socially relevant dance pieces for the American people, in particular, audiences that had not previously had access to the theater.  Alongside Tamiris, choreographers affiliated with the project included Doris Humphrey (1895-1958), Charles Weidman (1901-75), Ruth Page (1899-1991), and Katherine Dunham (1909-2006).

When funding cutbacks hit the Federal Theatre Project, the FDP was absorbed back into the theater project in October 1937.  Dance productions continued, however, under the aegis of the Federal Theatre Project, until further political controversy led to the dismantling of the FTP in 1939.

The first production was Monde in the summer of 1936, described as a “dance drama” and a “jazz ballet,” inspired by a poem by Walt Whitman (1819-92) and focused on bringing diverse groups together.  Another production that year was Young Tramps, a play about young, unemployed men who took to the road.  Both productions showcased experimental elements, combining modern dance, special costumes, and changes of scenes and props.

One of its notable productions was How Long, Brethren? (May 1937-January 1938), choreographed by Helen Tamiris, that set dances to Black protest songs.  The show was performed by an all-white cast, and inspired a protest after one of its performances. 

In the 1930s and ’40s, radio drama was a popular form of theater across the country.  It’s pretty much died out here, though abroad there are still broadcasts of radio plays—and there are occasionally radio dramas performed in the U.S. as well. 

Like all other fields of endeavor, the Great Depression destroyed the employment opportunities for actors who worked in radio.  It was a specialty until, in the 1950s, television ate away the audience for radio plays.  So, during the Depression, the WPA became the producer of radio drama and other radio programs in order to reemploy the radio performers who’d lost their jobs.

Radio broadcasting became the concern of the Federal Theatre of the Air, a division of the Federal Theatre Project.  It began weekly broadcasts on 15 March 1936, and for three years, according to Wikipedia, the Federal Theatre of the Air presented an average of 3,000 programs annually on commercial stations and networks.  The major programs originated in New York, but radio divisions were also established in 11 states.

The Federal Theatre of the Air presented a wide range of programs, such as plays specifically written for radio (Contemporary Theatre, presenting plays by modern authors), docudramas, dramatized works of prose fiction (Repertory Theatre of the Air, which presented literary classics), as well as plays originally written for the stage (Ibsen's Plays, presenting performances of the 12 major plays), including musical theater, and opera (Gilbert and Sullivan Light Opera, which broadcast the complete works performed by Federal Theatre actors and recordings by the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company).

There were also programs for children, such as Once Upon a Time, and informational programs on health and safety, art, music, and history. 

The Federal Theatre Project established five regional centers in New York City, Boston (Northeast), Chicago (Midwest), Los Angeles (West), and New Orleans (South).  New York was sort of the headquarters and many, even most, of the productions started there.  New York City, after all, was then, as it is now, the center of theater in the United States: the talent is there in large numbers and the facilities, rehearsal studios, and theaters are there.

Productions would rehearse in New York, then première there.  Then they’d go out on tour.  Projects would also be initiated in any one of the regional centers (which, readers may notice, are all “theater towns”) and tour from there. 

Stage productions fell into several categories: new plays (including the Living Newspapers, plus plays like It Can't Happen Here); classical plays; plays formerly produced on Broadway (Paul Green’s Hymn to the Rising Sun); modern foreign plays (Leonid Andreyev’s The Sabine Women); stock plays (Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones); children’s plays (Mother Goose Goes to Town and Mother Goose on the Loose); revues and musical comedies; vaudeville; dance productions (Candide, from Voltaire); Early Americana; American pageants; puppet and marionette plays.  

Capitalizing on the FTP’s national network and inherent diversity of artists, the Federal Theatre established specific chapters dedicated to showcasing and celebrating the work of previously under-represented artists.  These included the French Theatre in Los Angeles, the German Theater in New York City, and the Negro Theatre Unit which had several chapters across the country, with its largest office in New York City.  The FTP set up 17 so-called Negro Theatre Units (NTU) in cities throughout the United States.

By the project’s conclusion, 22 American cities had served as headquarters for black theater units.  The New York Negro Theatre Unit was the most well known.  The two sections of the New York City NTU presented some 30 plays.  The third production was the most popular: the Voodoo Macbeth (1936), as it came to be called.  Director Orson Welles adapted Shakespeare’s play set on a mythical island suggesting the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe (1767-1820; King of Haiti: 1811-20).

The New York Negro Theatre Unit also oversaw the African American Dance Unit featuring Nigerian artists displaced by the Ethiopian Crisis (a dispute between Italy and Ethiopia in 1935 that escalated, ultimately resulting in Italy’s annexing Ethiopia in 1936).  These projects employed over 1,000 black actors and directors.

The Federal Theatre Project was distinguished for its focus on racial injustice.  Flanagan expressly ordered her subordinates to follow the WPA policy against racial prejudice.  Flanagan took action several times against FTP staffers who acted out of racial prejudice against black artists.  The FTP overtly sought out relationships with the African American community.

Flanagan’s crusade for equality eventually became a sticking point for the Dies Committee (i.e., HUAC; Dies was chairman of the predecessor to HUAC, 1938-44), which pulled funding for the Federal Theater Project, arguing that “racial equality forms a vital part of the Communist dictatorship and practices.”

It was not feasible to operate Federal Theatre Project companies in towns where only a few theater professionals were on relief rolls.  In order to serve a wide geographic area, however, FTP projects toured in rural areas and small towns.  FTP tours ranged widely within their regions and companies covered a number of sections of the country where residents saw theatrical productions infrequently.

Many of the notable artists of the time participated in the Federal Theatre Project, including Susan Glaspell (playwright; 1875-1948) who served as Midwest bureau director.  (Glaspell won the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Alison's House.)   The legacy of the Federal Theatre Project can also be found in beginning the careers of a new generation of theater artists. Arthur Miller (playwright; 1915-2005), Orson Welles (stage and film director; 1915–85), John Houseman (actor and producer; 1902-88), Martin Ritt (director, producer, and actor; 1914-90), Elia Kazan (film and theater director, producer, and screenwriter; 1909-2003), Joseph Losey (movie director; 1909-84), Marc Blitzstein (composer, lyricist, and librettist; 1903-64), and Abe Feder (lighting designer; 1908-97) are among those who became established, in part, through their work in the Federal Theatre.

The Federal Theatre Project employed around 12,700 people at some point between 1935 and 1939.  It had projects in 40 cities, the most of which went to New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—the three largest cities in the country. 

During its nearly four years of operation, 30 million people attended FTP productions in more than 200 theaters nationwide, many of which had been closed.  The FTP also produced events in parks, schools, churches, clubs, factories, hospitals, and closed-off streets.  It produced an approximate total of 1,200 shows, not including its radio programs.

The FTP was created to employ and train people, not to generate revenue, so 65% of its productions were presented free of charge; the rest charged 25¢, 50¢, or 75¢ (the equivalent today of about $5.50-16.40).  The total cost of the Federal Theatre Project was $46 million (about $1.04 billion in 2024).

In May 1938, Congress convened the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC).  The committee first targeted the Works Progress Administration (WPA) overall for investigation, and soon the Federal Theatre Project specifically.  Texas conservative Democrat Martin Dies, Jr. (1900-72; Member of Congress: 1931-45; 1953-59), spearheaded the committee.  

Hallie Flanagan’s character and motives were attacked both by the Dies committee and by disgruntled FTP members called as witnesses.  Federal Theatre Project productions were branded as propaganda for communism.  Flanagan responded that they were in fact propaganda for democracy since they utilized constitutional freedoms to point out America’s most pressing problems.  Against a background of Hitler’s march on Europe, Congress slashed relief funding as America’s focus turned toward war.

(Hitler had reincorporated the Saarland into Germany in March 1935 and remilitarized the Rhineland in March 1936; he assisted Francisco Franco [1892-1975] in the Spanish Civil War [1936-39] from its start in July 1936; the Anschluss with Austria was accomplished in March 1938; Germany annexed the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in October 1938.)

Federal Project Number One, the parent agency for the five arts projects, ended in 1939 when, under pressure from Congress, the theater project was cancelled and the other projects were required to rely on state funding and local sponsorship.  Congress cut federal funding completely as of 30 June 1939, immediately putting 8,000 people out of work across the country.

[Theater professionals from around the country protested the demise of the Federal Theatre Project.  Despite the furor over communist infiltration of the WPA, in the end it wasn’t anticommunism that felled the FTP, but the view in Congress that the average American saw no value in spending tax dollars to aid performers and encourage the arts. 

[Flanagan’s anti-racist stance and her willingness, even eagerness, to engage with social issues really set the conservatives in Congress and certain corners of the press off, however.  The money was just the excuse—it gave them cover.

[Federal funding for the arts was controversial in Roosevelt’s New Deal, although the budget for the Project amounted to less than 1% of the WPA’s total allocation.  If readers will scan my 11-part post on “A History of the National Endowment for the Arts” (5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, and 30 November, and 3, 13, 16, and 19 December 2023), you’ll see that the situation is still just as fraught and dire.  And if that’s not recent enough for you, check out “‘When the Arts Become a Partisan Issue, We All Lose’” by Cristina Pla-Guzman, in “America's Culture War—Now at Your Local Theater” (link above).]

America's Culture War—Now at Your Local Theater

 
“WHEN THE ARTS BECOME A PARTISAN ISSUE,
WE ALL LOSE”
by Cristina Pla-Guzman

[Cristina Pla-Guzman’s “When the Arts Become a Partisan Issue, We All Lose” was posted on American Theatre’s website on 20 August 2024.  It didn’t appear in the magazine’s print edition.] 

Gov. Ron DeSantis’s veto of all arts and cultural funding in Florida is a crushing blow—and an opportunity to organize.

In June, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis [b. 1978; Republican Governor of Florida: 2019-Present] vetoed $32 million allocated for arts and cultural grants. It is a significant financial blow to arts nonprofits across the state. Each year, organizations are required to submit annual applications for vetting to Florida’s Division of Arts & Culture (FDAC [part of the Florida Department of State whose mission is to support and promote arts and culture in the state]) and could qualify for up to $150,000 in grants. This year, the FDAC recommended about $77 million toward 864 grants, but lawmakers approved $32 million. That was the earthquake, but then the aftershock happened when DeSantis vetoed arts funding altogether [on 12 June 2024]. 

[According to the Palm Beach Daily News, “On June 12, DeSantis vetoed all $32 million in arts and culture grants from a budget of $117 billion. His message included self-serving statements about ‘insulating Florida from malign actions of the Chinese Communist Party’ and much back-patting about spending less money than last year, but nothing about why such a small part (less than .03%) of the budget should be subject to elimination.”]

Jennifer Jones, president and CEO of the Florida Cultural Alliance (FCA [not-for-profit arts advocacy organization]), provides a critical perspective on the situation. Established in 1985, the FCA is a key advocate for arts and culture funding in the state. The organization works to ensure that grants from the FDAC are sustained and effectively distributed. Jones notes that the $32 million cut has a broader economic impact than might initially be evident. Among the cultural entities affected by the veto are zoos, botanical gardens, community theatres, and professional opera companies. Each of these organizations plays a unique role in Florida’s cultural ecosystem. For instance, Pérez Art Museum Miami, the city’s premier art museum, lost $70,500 in funding. Further, many grants serve as matching funds, essential for securing additional financial support from other sources. Losing state funding can result in a multiplied financial shortfall, where a $1 reduction in state support can translate into a $2 or more loss when considering the leveraged impact on other funding sources. 

Many fear this move is a reflection of broader political trends that threaten cultural expression in Florida. Yet the fight for the arts in Florida is far from over. 

Already Tight

For organizations that were already struggling to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, like City Theatre in Miami, the funding cut translates into operational challenges and potential reductions in programming. Said artistic director Margaret Ledford, “We’re dealing wit h a shortfall in our current fiscal year, which will likely force us to cut back on free programming and possibly let go of staff.” This sentiment is echoed across the sector, where organizations are bracing for the financial strain of diminished resources.

Miami New Drama, operating from the historic Colony Theatre on Miami Beach, faces its own set of challenges. Said artistic director Michel Hausmann, “We had already prepared for a 50 percent cut in funding, which was tough enough. But the veto, which meant losing an additional $75,000, really complicates things for us. This amount represents significant portions of our budget, including the salary of a staff member or a third of our education budget.”

[The founder of Miami New Drama is Moisés Kaufman, founding artistic director of the Tectonic Theatre Project, who often showcases his works at MND. He did so with Here There Are Blueberries, his 2018 documentary play, and MND features prominently throughout my five-part post on that play, published on 26 and 29 May, and 1, 4, and 7 June 2024.]

While the veto did not directly affect Juggerknot Theatre Company, known for its immersive productions that celebrate Miami’s diverse neighborhoods, the loss represents a significant challenge for the tiny but mighty theatre company, which had applied for a 2025-26 grant in the next cycle. Due to the current situation, Tanya Bravo, Juggerknot Theatre Company’s founder and executive director, described the moment as one of uncertainty.

[Immersive theater is a theatrical experience that involves the audience as active participants, rather than passive spectators. It’s a sensory experience that blurs the line between reality and performance, and encourages audiences to have strong emotional and physical responses. It’s site-specific and participatory, and often interactive, non-linear, and technologically experimental. A discussion of the form can be found on Howlround.]

“I don’t know if I’m going to get that funding,” Bravo said, “and I need to prepare myself to find that funding somewhere else.”

Planning ahead has always been complicated for nonprofit theatres, because the business model makes future viability dependent on a lot of undependable circumstances. This problem has been even more pronounced in the last few years, with increases in production costs and decreases in revenue from ticket sales and subscriptions. This isn’t just a Florida issue, it’s a national one. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, from June 2023 to June 2024, wages and salaries in the private sector rose by 4.6 percent, while benefit costs increased by 3.5 percent. Coupled with an overall inflation rate of 3 percent, which affects the cost of everything from lumber to lights, these rising costs create an extra strain on already lean theatre budgets. This economic pressure forces theatres to make tough decisions, often at the expense of programming and community outreach.

What’s more, every dollar spent on the arts generates approximately nine dollars in local economic activity. Reducing arts funding impacts not only the theatres but also local businesses that benefit from the influx of patrons, such as restaurants and hotels, which in turn affects jobs at supporting small businesses. Miami Beach, for example, benefits from the presence of world-class cultural institutions, which make the city a more attractive place to live and work. By cutting funding for the arts, the state risks undermining its appeal to potential residents and businesses.

“This isn’t just about the intrinsic value of the arts; it’s about economic growth and quality of life,” Hausmann said.

Indeed, according to a study from Americans for the Arts [nonprofit organization whose primary focus is advancing the arts in the U.S.], in collaboration with the state FDAC and Citizens for Florida Arts Inc. [charitable organization that works with the Florida Division of Arts and Culture to advance the arts in the state], the state’s arts and cultural industry generates $5.7 billion in economic activity a year, including $2.9 billion by nonprofit arts and culture organizations, and supports more than 91,000 full-time jobs.

Political Motivations

The veto comes against a backdrop of broader political trends in Florida, including anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. DeSantis publicly justified the veto in a press conference by singling out the four annual fringe festivals that take place in Fort Myers, Tampa, Sarasota, and Orlando, as promoting “sexual” content that was an “inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars.” It’s worth noting that while these fringe festivals do include some adult content, it is always accompanied by warnings and age restrictions. Some observers interpret the funding cut as part of a larger pattern of political extremism. 

“Florida is a guinea pig politically on what could happen nationally,” Bravo said. “We have to pay attention to this and spread the word, because it does feel like we are being silenced in a way.”

[At a press conference on 27 June, however, DeSantis offered this explanation for the veto: “‘We didn't have control over how it was being given,’ DeSantis said of the individual grant awards, during a Thursday appearance in Polk County. ‘So you're having your tax dollars being given in grants to things like the [Orlando] Fringe Festival, which is like a sexual festival where they're doing all this stuff.

[“‘How many of you think your tax dollars should go to fund that? Not very many people would do that,’ he added, explaining for the first time the veto which occurred more than two weeks ago, but which continues to roil Florida's cultural community.”

[The Fringe, the longest-running theater festival in the United States, features shows that sometimes include drag performances or racy adult content.]

In an open letter to DeSantis, leaders from Orlando and Tampa Fringe are asking him to reconsider his veto, further stating they would rather not be included in this year’s budget if that means that funding can be reinstated to other organizations.

To further understand the political climate around the cuts, American Theatre emailed dozens of members of the Florida State House, the Governor’s office, and the Lt. Governor’s office [Jeanette Núñez (b. 1972; Republican Lieutenant Governor of Florida: 2019-Present)] for more information. We received only one reply, from State Representative Vicki Lopez [b. 1958; Republican Member of the Florida House of Representatives: 2022-Present], who said, “While the legislature has indeed shown its support for the arts, a governor’s veto can only be reversed through a veto override. We have made our concerns known to the leadership, but they are the only ones who can call a special session to override vetoes, and they have not signaled a willingness to do so.” Rep. Lopez explained how, as a member of the subcommittees for Pre-K-12 and Infrastructure & Tourism Appropriations, she understands the significant impact that arts and culture have on both education and the economy. “The arts are not just a cultural enrichment but a fundamental pillar for the educational and economic vitality of our communities.”

Social Consequences

Artists are custodians of local heritage, offering both a reflection of and a contribution to a community’s identity. These funding cuts threaten not just the survival of arts organizations, but also the lives of individual artists who already experience financial instability. This instability is exacerbated by the high cost of living in places like Miami, which further strains emerging artists already struggling to make ends meet. 

Andie Arthur, executive director of the South Florida Theatre League [alliance of theatrical organizations and professionals started in 1993, dedicated to nurturing, promoting, and advocating for the growth and prestige of the South Florida theatre industry], highlighted a growing trend of talent drain. “Theatres are accustomed to overcoming adversity, but can we really create sustainable careers in such an unstable environment?” Arthur asks. “We’re seeing a lot of local talent feeling they need to relocate to other states where the environment is more supportive of their careers.”

Beyond the economic impact, City Theatre’s Ledford underscored the emotional and social consequences of these funding cuts.

“The arts are a crucial part of our community’s emotional health,” she said. She mentioned that arts experiences foster empathy and community connection, values that are increasingly vital in today’s polarized environment. The decision to cut funding, she argued, aligns with broader political trends that marginalize and undermine cultural institutions, especially those that challenge prevailing norms.

The Path Forward

Despite the setbacks, there is a palpable sense of resilience among Florida’s cultural leaders. Jones said she was hopeful that this crisis will galvanize community support and advocacy, creating a catalyst for new forms of collaboration and advocacy.

The FCA is not only engaging in grassroots advocacy but also exploring “grass-tops” strategies. These involve leveraging the influence of donors and community leaders who have a stake in the arts and can advocate for renewed support at higher levels of government. The goal is to foster a dialogue that reinforces the value of arts funding and its critical role in enhancing quality of life.

In short, Florida arts leaders are mobilizing to address the funding cuts. “We’re calling on people to speak out, write letters, and advocate for the importance of arts funding,” said Ledford. Ledford encourages both artists and audiences to engage with their legislators and community leaders to emphasize the vital role of the arts in society.

Perhaps DeSantis’s veto will prompt a reevaluation of how arts funding is approached. Jones said she envisions a future where arts funding is recognized not just as a discretionary expenditure but as an essential investment in community health and vibrancy. She advocates for a model where funding is not only stable, but also responsive to the diverse needs of Florida’s cultural landscape.

In the face of adversity, artists have always shown an incredible capacity for renewal and innovation. Through collective action, solidarity, and a renewed commitment to their mission, leaders at Florida’s cultural organizations will continue to fight for their place in the community. As Bravo aptly put it, “We have to continue to tell stories, and our stories are about the people in Miami—they should not be silenced.”

[Cristina Pla-Guzman (she/her) is a nationally recognized, award-winning teaching artist, director, performer, and writer based in Miami.  Pla-Guzman is featured significantly in “Tomorrow’s Tamoras and Titanias: How to Heal the High School Space” by Gabriela Furtado Coutinho, posted on Rick On Theater in “Theater Education & Training, Part 3,” 9 October 2024.

[Even occasional readers of Rick On Theater will know that support for the arts and the inclusion of the arts in education, both as a practical experience and as a subject for academic study, are among my most strongly-held principles.  I have written on the subject many times on this blog and have posted the views of others who share my position. 

[I won’t make a list of the posts on ROT that treat this topic—the list would be too long—instead, I will quote from a letter that George Washington (yes, that George Washington) wrote in 1796 when he made a large endowment to what was then Liberty Hall Academy (and would become my alma mater, Washington and Lee University): “To promote Literature in this rising Empire, and to encourage the Arts, have ever been among the warmest wishes of my heart.”] 

*  *  *  *
“AMERICA’S WAR ON THEATER”
by Daniel Blank 

[“America’s War on Theater” by Daniel Blank was published on the Los Angeles Review of Books website on 22 July 2024.  LARB styles itself as “a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and disseminating rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts.”  The LABR website officially débuted in April 2012 and a print edition premièred in May 2013.]

Daniel Blank reviews James Shapiro’s “The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War.”

The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture by James Shapiro. Penguin, 2024. 384 pages.

Hostility to theater has been a virulent feature of American life since before the country was founded. In 1774, the First Continental Congress passed the Articles of Association, which aimed to restrict trade with Britain. But the Articles also discouraged “every species of extravagance and dissipation,” which included stage plays among “other expensive diversions and entertainments” like horse racing and cockfighting. The consequences were real: playhouses sat empty, and acting companies toured abroad. This was an early attempt, though hardly the last, to ban theater in the soon-to-be United States—the result of a centuries-old prejudice that has never completely faded from our cultural discourse. Anti-theatrical efforts are not historical blips; they’re an American tradition.

[The Articles of Association, formally known as the Continental Association, was an agreement among the American colonies adopted on 2 October 1774. It called for a trade boycott against British merchants by the colonies specifically to force Parliament to repeal the Intolerable Acts (sometimes called the Insufferable or Coercive Acts), enacted in 1774 as retaliation for the Boston Tea Party (16 December 1773) and strongly opposed by the colonies.

[The trade ban was not only against the importation or consumption of goods from Britain, but also threatened an exportation ban on products from the colonies to Britain if the Intolerable Acts were not repealed. Among the measures for enduring the scarcity of goods was a regimen of frugality and austerity that discouraged most forms of entertainment, including, as Blank implies, theatrical performances.]

James Shapiro’s The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War (2024), a brilliant and absorbing account of the 20th-century effort to establish something like a national theater in the United States, doesn’t go back quite as far as the Revolutionary Era. Between 1935 and 1939, a New Deal work relief program, the Federal Theatre Project [FTP; 1935-39], staged over a thousand productions nationwide, reaching an estimated audience of 30 million people. It was an astonishing undertaking, one whose impetus can be difficult to grasp from a 21st-century perspective. “It was the product,” Shapiro writes, “of a moment when the arts, no less than industry and agriculture, were thought to be vital to the health of the republic and deserving of its support.” That moment turned out to be brief, and the Federal Theatre was short-lived. Its inevitable demise was the result of a sustained effort by a group of lawmakers who were determined to end funding for a program they saw to be “spreading a dangerously progressive as well as a racially integrated vision of America.”

[James Shapiro (b. 1955) is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who specializes in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period. “James Shapiro’s Shakespeare” by Kirk Woodward, which discusses four of his earlier books (Oberammergau [2000], A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare [2005], Contested Will [2010], and The Year of Lear [2015]) was posted on ROT on 17 November 2020. There are also two articles by Shapiro on other ROT posts: “Shakespeare in Modern English?” (from the New York Times) in “Play On! 36 Playwrights Translate Shakespeare,” 31 January 2016, and “‘The Theater of War,’ by Bryan Doerries,” a review by James Shapiro from the New York Times in “Theater of War, Part 1,” 22 June 2024.    

[The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945; 32nd President of the United States: 1933-45) between 1933 and 1938 to rescue the U.S. from the Great Depression. One of the programs was the Works Progress Administration (WPA; 1935-43), an agency that employed millions of jobless to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, among other infrastructure works. One of the projects was the employment of unemployed artists of all fields—painting and sculpture, writing, theater, dance, and music—to make art for public consumption. Out of this, among other projects, came the FTP.]

One of those lawmakers was Martin Dies Jr. [1900-72], a racist [Democratic] congressman from Texas [1931-45] who quickly emerges as the villain in Shapiro’s story. Ambitious and undaunted, Dies “saw which way the political winds were blowing” and set sail in that direction, eventually finding himself at the helm of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities ([HUAC; 1938-75] laying the groundwork for Joe McCarthy’s [1908-57; Republican U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, 1947-57] crusade a decade and a half later). The Federal Theatre proved an easy target, and casting its productions as “un-American” and “Communist” earned Dies national attention. He sought to make a name for himself and to shut down the relief program: by 1939, he had succeeded on both counts. A disappointed President Franklin D. Roosevelt reluctantly signed off on the Federal Theatre’s termination, and it soon faded into obscurity. (Its materials—playbooks, programs, and other theatrical ephemera—were unceremoniously deposited in an airplane hangar in Maryland, where they remained unnoticed until the 1970s.)

In Shapiro’s persuasive account, Dies established a “playbook” (a term that, as Shapiro’s epigraph points out, has a theatrical resonance) that set the stage for some of the same right-wing strategies still in use today. These include making the debate about what is American and what isn’t; identifying and attacking vulnerable groups and organizations; employing intimidating and threatening, even violent, rhetoric; and using the press to disseminate dubious, headline-grabbing claims. Shapiro’s focus is specific—a single federal initiative that existed for only a brief time—and in this sense, the book is reminiscent of some of his Shakespeare scholarship, particularly the award-winning 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005) and its follow-up, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 (2015). This approach allows Shapiro to illuminate, in archivally rich detail, not only the attacks on the Federal Theatre but also its productions and the people behind them. This is an important, much-needed study whose relevance to our current culture wars is uncomfortably apparent from the first page. But it’s also worth noting that efforts to suppress theater were nothing new in the 1930s, even if Dies was remarkably percipient in his tactics. The Federal Theatre’s closure is just one episode in the United States’ long and troubling history of anti-theatricalism.

¤

The Playbook opens on a contentious congressional hearing [before HUAC] in December 1938. Here we meet Hallie Flanagan [1889-1969], the Vassar College professor [“Director of English Speech”] who had been tapped to lead the Federal Theatre a few years earlier, defending the enterprise—and theater itself—with phenomenal poise and determination. Dies and his colleagues grilled her on the question of whether the Federal Theatre was promoting propaganda, apparently unaware that, as Flanagan explained, most theater is in some sense “propagandistic”: it questions the status quo and comments on societal norms and practices. If anything, these productions were “propaganda for democracy,” and as Shapiro points out, “the overwhelming majority” of the Federal Theatre’s productions “were unobjectionable.” But the committee’s concern was those few controversial plays that were more piercing in their social commentary. The fact that Flanagan had spent time as a Guggenheim Fellow [14 months in 1926-27] studying theater in Europe (including the Soviet Union)—a tradition she found to be “intellectually rigorous” and “committed to education and propaganda”—didn’t help her cause.

In theory, the purpose of the hearing was to discuss the Federal Theatre’s activities and, at perhaps a deeper level, the question of whether drama can ever be completely neutral or apolitical. But instead, it became an opportunity for grandstanding, a forum for Dies and his colleagues to attack the country’s “enemies” and “the spiritual lethargy and moral indifference” that allegedly threatened it. Everything about this congressional scene seems painfully familiar: the characters, the setting, the script. Some of the lines Shapiro quotes could easily have been spoken in the current congressional session. (As I began reading The Playbook, for instance, Marjorie Taylor Greene [b. 1974; U.S. Representative from Georgia: 2020-Present] was refusing to call Anthony Fauci “doctor” and stating that he should be imprisoned as he testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.) That the Dies committee’s interrogation of Hallie Flanagan seems so immediate speaks partly to Shapiro’s gifts as a storyteller, but also to the state of American government in 2024.

In addition to the moral tenor of Dies’s attack, there was also a financial aspect: whether taxpayers should have to pay for theatrical productions that advocate a social message (although one gets the sense that Dies wouldn’t have been any happier had they been entirely dispassionate). This is a common refrain of anti-theatricalists: that theater is costly and wasteful, and that the money—especially when drawn from the government’s purse—could be better spent elsewhere. Why allocate relief funds to actors to perform a play, the committee wondered, when you could give it to them to perform a tangible service? Why build a theater when you could build a highway? Flanagan reminded the committee that the entire Federal Theatre Project had only “amounted to [. . .] the cost of building one battleship.” It’s a common rebuttal even today, though its effect may be limited: when the New York City arts budget was recently in danger of being slashed—a decision that, thankfully, was narrowly averted—one New York Times editorial observed that these programs could be supported “for the price of a police helicopter” (their police department’s budget authorized the purchase of two).

[Cuts across the board in the New York City budget for Fiscal Year 2025, including additional cuts to arts and cultural programs on top of FY 2024 reductions, were announced in January 2024. After pleas from arts organizations and cultural leaders in the city, much of the threatened reductions was restored in June.]

Again, though, in these sorts of discussions, logical reasoning usually takes a backseat to uninformed showboating. The Dies committee aimed to paint a very specific kind of picture for their fellow legislators and the American people, rooted less in fact than in ideology. This presents another axiom of anti-theatrical movements: opponents tend to know very little about the theater they’re attacking. None of the committee members, Shapiro observes, “had ever seen a Federal Theatre production.” Nor did they have much knowledge of theater more broadly: one of the committee members, Joe Starnes of Alabama [1895-1962; Democratic U.S. Representative: 1935-45], became an object of ridicule when he unwittingly asked if [William] Shakespeare’s [1564-1616] contemporary Christopher Marlowe [1564?-93] was a communist. The Dies committee wanted to gut a program they knew almost nothing about. It seems telling that the committee’s 124-page report did not mention a single play.

¤

The sheer popularity of theater in 19th and early-20th-century America can be difficult to fathom. In The Playbook’s second chapter, we encounter a young Willa Cather [novelist; 1873-1947], who at the turn of the century was a theater critic in Lincoln, Nebraska [for the Nebraska State Journal and the Lincoln Courier in 1894, while she was a student at the University of Nebraska]. Despite being a rural state with a population just above a million [New York City’s population was over half again as much at this time], Nebraska boasted over 50 playhouses in 1890: during a particular week in Lincoln in the spring of 1894, Cather was able to see and review five separate theatrical productions. The metrics alone are staggering. Shapiro estimates that as many as a quarter of the adult-aged population in Lincoln saw a play that week—“a theatergoing intensity,” he claims, “not seen since London in Shakespeare’s day.” “[P]laygoing,” Shapiro concludes, “was a national pastime.”

That popularity would wane in the decades that followed, due in large part to the arrival of motion pictures. Lamenting what had been lost, Cather remarked in the late 1920s that only live theater “can make us forget who we are and where we are,” while films “do not make us feel anything more than interest or curiosity or astonishment.” In a sense, the Federal Theatre’s success recaptured what had been so magical about American theater just a generation earlier: the Omaha World-Herald proclaimed that it “filled [. . .] the gap that was made when the movies took over.” But popularity is a double-edged sword: from ancient Greece to the Shakespearean stage, successful theatrical traditions have almost always met with hostility. To be sure, the Dies committee was more successful than many previous anti-theatrical efforts throughout history. But it also attests to just how vibrant the Federal Theatre—and the spirit of American theater it reclaimed—was.

The Playbook’s central chapters each focus on a single Federal Theatre show, including a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth that premiered in April 1936. It was staged in Harlem by one of the “Negro Units,” which had been established across the country “to support Black actors and playwrights.” Set in 19th-century Haiti, with a cast of 137, this incredibly innovative production—which became known as the “Voodoo Macbeth”—was also the Federal Theatre’s biggest hit. This was especially clear on opening night when a marching band made its way through Harlem behind a banner that read “Macbeth by William Shakespeare,” and a crowd of more than 10,000 people gathered outside Harlem’s Lafayette Theatre; a preview performance a few nights earlier had drawn 3,000. The Lafayette’s capacity was about 1,200. [The show ran 9 April-20 June 1936 at the Lafayette before moving to the Adelphi on Broadway.]

None of that success prevented certain journalists from writing about the production in negative, racist terms. (Here and elsewhere, Shapiro does not shy away from these accounts, opting instead to give a full picture of the atmosphere surrounding the Federal Theatre and the obstacles it faced.) Nor did it stop the director, a 20-year-old Orson Welles [1915-85], from taking full credit: his working script was titled “Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Negro Version, Conceived, Arranged, Staged by Orson Welles”; in later years, he would recall the production without even mentioning its lead actors, Jack Carter [c. 1902-67] and Edna Thomas [1885-1974], or the many other cast and creative team members responsible for its success. But the Harlem Macbeth was nonetheless a great triumph for the Federal Theatre, and its popularity undeniable. After transferring to Broadway [Adelphi Theatre, 7-18 July 1936], it traveled the country for three months with a company of 180 people—“the largest Shakespeare production,” notes Shapiro, “to ever tour America.”

It is easy to see why Dies and his like-minded cohort found the Federal Theatre’s productions so threatening. It wasn’t just that they promoted a more liberal, inclusive vision of the United States than Dies was comfortable with. It was also that they were drawing huge crowds across the country—and their message was spreading.

¤

One of the most striking aspects of The Playbook—at least to a reader who, like me, is deeply interested in amateur theater—is how many people involved in the Federal Theatre Project were not theater professionals. To some degree, this was by design: the Federal Theatre’s intention, after all, was to put people back to work, often regardless of the credits on their résumés. But it is nevertheless surprising that its leadership also drew from amateur backgrounds. The majority of Hallie Flanagan’s theatrical experience came from her time at Vassar, where she was involved in campus productions and designed a program around “Experimental Theatre.” This notion of experimentation undoubtedly shaped her vision of what the stage should be, and it helps us to conceptualize the Federal Theatre as a whole: for the majority of productions, a polished Broadway show was neither the goal nor the outcome. They even sometimes came across as a bit ragtag: in one instance, Flanagan stepped in at the last minute to help build a set and locate props, as if she were helping to salvage a student play.

Much more than professionalism, the goal of the Federal Theatre was to be relatable to its audience members and to make them reflect on important social and political issues. Relevance was key—especially for those who may never have been in a theater before, or not for many years—and to make productions relevant, they had to be adaptable. In the summer of 1936, the Federal Theatre signed a deal with Sinclair Lewis [1885-1951] to produce a theatrical version of his chilling novel It Can’t Happen Here (1935), which warned about the destruction of democracy and the rise of fascism. [Fascists or right-wing totalitarians Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) was Duce (‘Leader’) of Italy in 1922-43, António Salazar (1889-1970) was Chefe (‘Boss’) of Portugal in 1932-68, Engelbert Dolfuss (1892-1934) was Chancellor of Austria in 1932-34, Adolf Hitler (1899-1945) was Führer (‘Leader’) of Germany in 1933-45, and Francisco Franco (1892-1975) was Caudillo (‘Leader’) of Spain in 1936-75.] The book had originally been slated to be turned into a film by MGM, but the script—which did not hold back in its depictions of “concentration camps, the burning of the books, the invasion of homes”—was ultimately deemed too “politically inflammatory.” The goal was to have the play open simultaneously in different cities across the country, demonstrating that, “like a film, a play could open on the same day everywhere.” This plan proved to be overly ambitious, and productions were canceled, for various reasons, in New Orleans, Kansas City, and Brooklyn. For those that went forward, however, the individual directors had been encouraged to “bring the play to a close in a way that worked best locally.” The ending in Cincinnati, Tacoma, and Seattle was different from the ending in Omaha, which was different from the ending in San Francisco. Part of having a “national” theater was recognizing that the play would speak differently to different parts of the nation.

[The stage version of It Can't Happen Here was written by Sinclair Lewis and John C. Moffitt. It premiered on 27 October 1936, in 21 U.S. theaters in 17 states simultaneously, in productions sponsored by the Federal Theater Project.]

The situation was similar with a play called One Third of a Nation [1938]. Its subject was the dangerous, substandard living conditions in New York City: the play both began and ended with a tenement fire. But housing issues were not the same everywhere, and once again, regional productions were encouraged to adapt the play for local audiences. During a two-month run in Philadelphia, Shapiro explains, “the focus was changed from White to Black slum dwellers, and the survivor of the tragic tenement disaster in the opening scenes is a Black woman rather than a Jewish man.” The primary public concern in Philadelphia was construction quality rather than fire, so the “disaster” at the beginning of the play was changed to a building collapse. As was often the case, the Federal Theatre’s art channeled reality, making it more immediate for those on and off the stage. Shapiro quotes from Arthur Jarvis Jr., who notes that “some cast members lived in the very conditions condemned by the drama and could bring their personal experiences to each performance.”

[The quotations from Arthur Jarvis, Jr., to which Blank refers above seem to correspond to Arthur R. Jarvis, Jr., the author of "Cultural Nationalism in an Urban Setting: the Philadelphia Experience with Federal Project Number One of the Works Progress Administration, 1935-1943," a 1995 dissertation for a Ph.D. in history at Pennsylvania State University. 

[The dissertation’s “Abstract” states that “written guidelines [for FTP programs] forced participants to probe the city's [i.e., Philadelphia] heritage for useful material. This resulted in local scenes being recreated by the artists [and] at least one theatrical presentation directly influenced by the city's outdated housing code . . . .” 

[Jarvis continues, “Although art, theatre, writing, and music projects all operated in Philadelphia, they had varying degrees of success due to the city's cultural climate.” He concludes the summary, “This thesis explores how the projects influenced the city and how project success was affected by Philadelphia institutions.” (It seems that Jarivs’s actual words cited by Shapiro were taken from an article Jarvis published in a scholarly journal: “The Living Newspaper in Philadelphia, 1938-1939,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies [Pennsylvania State U., University Park] 61.3 [July 1994]).] 

Not all of the Federal Theatre’s productions were successful. A play called Liberty Deferred [1938], which confronted the horrors of racism throughout American history, met with intense resistance and was never staged—an emblem of the Federal Theatre’s failure to live up to its ideals. And when the Federal Theatre sold the film rights to One Third of a Nation [1939], it was turned into a sanitized, whitewashed version that heavily diluted the play’s biting message about the need for government intervention in the housing emergency. The project’s ultimate failure, of course, came at the hands of the Dies committee. But in its attempt to establish a national theater—one that had a broad reach, spanning racial and class divides and speaking to both local and nationwide concerns—the Federal Theatre came closer than anything has before or since.

[One Third of a Nation and Liberty Deferred were both Living Newspaper productions, created by the FTP’s Living Newspaper Units, transforming current events from the page to the stage by creating plays with scenes that dramatized newspaper articles.

[Living Newspapers were nonfiction—realistic, current, relevant—and the topics were always recent. The Living Newspapers frequently dramatized social issues of the day and often implicitly or explicitly urged social action, so controversy over their politics contributed to the disbanding of the FTP in 1939.]

¤

We don’t need to look too hard to see the Dies committee’s legacy. In a brief epilogue, Shapiro points to present-day efforts to suppress the arts, from House Republicans’ attempts to defund the National Endowment for the Arts [see “A History of the National Endowment for the Arts” (5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, and 30 November; 3, 13, 16, and 19 December 2023)] to attacks on student theatrical productions in high schools across the country. As I was writing this review, it was reported that Florida governor and erstwhile presidential candidate Ron DeSantis decided without explanation to veto all grants for arts organizations [see above]; it is no coincidence that he has championed book bans and education mandates that have led to the removal of Shakespeare from school libraries and classrooms.

What, then, is the path forward? It is at least encouraging that, if anti-theatricalism is an American tradition, so too is resistance to it. It was none other than George Washington who, despite the ban on theater, sanctioned a series of performances by army officers at Valley Forge in the spring of 1778, intended to boost morale and rally the cause; Joseph Addison’s [English essayist, poet, playwright, and politician; 1672-1719] Cato [1712; premièred, 1713], apparently one of Washington’s favorite plays, depicted liberty’s victory over tyranny. Washington was fighting against Britain, but he also took a stand against one of the Articles of Association’s oppressive restrictions. The colonists followed his lead: when Congress doubled down on its anti-theatrical stance a few months later, several states refused to support their position. 

[Cato is a dramatization of the last days of the Roman Senator Marcus Porcius Cato (“Cato the Younger”; 95-46 BCE), who, for Addison, served as an exemplar of republican virtue and opposition to tyranny. The patrician Cato, a follower of Stoicism, joined the senatorial opposition to Caesar.

[George Washington (1732-99; Commander in Chief of the Continental Army: 1775-83; First President of the United States: 1789-97) shared Addison's enthusiasm for Cato's self-sacrificing republican virtue, and frequently quoted from Addison's play. Washington identified with Cato, the self-disciplined patriot prepared to give his life for the cause of liberty. At the end of the hard winter of 1777 at Valley Forge, Washington defied a congressional ban on theatrical productions (enacted in 1774 to discourage “extravagance and dissipation”) and entertained his men with a production of Cato.]

The Playbook is a timely reminder both of the power of theater and of the vehement antipathy it can generate. In establishing one of his main themes, Shapiro stresses in the book’s preface that “the health of democracy and theater, twin-born in ancient Greece, has always been mutually dependent.” But the third sibling in this story is anti-theatricalism, which usually arises when theatrical traditions flourish in healthy democracies. It would be easy to view the Federal Theatre’s demise as more or less unique, an isolated incident from which today’s conservative lawmakers continue to draw inspiration. But it would be more accurate to view the story of American anti-theatricalism as a continuous tradition that never really went away and perhaps never will.

[Daniel Blank was an assistant professor of English at Durham University in the United Kingdom and is now the Managing Director of Public Programs at the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation in Pennsylvania.  His articles on Shakespeare and early modern drama have been published in journals including Renaissance Quarterly, The Review of English Studies, and Renaissance Studies.  His first book, Shakespeare and University Drama in Early Modern England, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023.  Before coming to Durham, he received his PhD from Princeton University and spent three years in the Harvard Society of Fellows.]

Zelda Fichandler (1924-2016), Part 2

 

[I say in the introduction to “Zelda Fichandler (1924-2016), Part 1” (17 October 2024) that Arena Stage was an important factor in my growing up in D.C.—it was the only professional alternative to the Broadway-adjunct National Theatre between 1950 (when Arena opened) and 1971, when the Kennedy Center opened (followed by the start of the little Off-Broadway-type companies in the ’80s)—so my family went a lot when I was old enough to see “real” theater (i.e., not “kiddie” shows or Gilbert and Sullivan).  

[I never met Zelda Fichandler, although she was a large presence in Washington’s cultural landscape, but Arena had a special place in my consciousness as I was becoming a theater-lover.  (I address this phenomenon in “A Broadway Baby,” 22 September 2010.)  It’s always been my benchmark for good theater, even after I began to see shows at other top companies around the country (including the Actors Theatre of Louisville, which I first attended when I was at Fort Knox in the army in 1969/70; Houston’s Alley Theatre; The Goodman Theatre and Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, the latter of which I saw at Washington’s Kennedy Center; The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis; and a passel of illustrious European troupes, courtesy of the Kennedy Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Lincoln Center Festival, including Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, the United Kingdom’s Royal National Theatre, and Germany’s Berliner Ensemble).

[Among the reasons I held Arena in such esteem—influenced, of course, by its being my “hometown theater” and D.C. having so few other outlets for theater at the time—was the shows I saw there that were special: The Great White Hope, Indians, Moonchildren, a striking Arturo Ui directed by Carl Weber, Georg Büchner's Leonce and Lena directed by Liviu Ciulei, and Elie Wiesel’s Zalmen, or the Madness of God directed by Alan Schneider (which I didn't see until it came to Broadway with David Margulies, who was one of my teachers in grad school at the time, in the cast).

[I briefly describe the state of theater in Washington around the time that Arena opened in “Washington’s Arena Stage: Under Construction,” 26 November 2011, and "‘Stages in DC’ (Summer 1985),” 25 December 2011.  “Stages in DC” was written just at the time when the city was emerging as a real theater town, and “Washington’s Arena Stage,” which focuses on the company’s opening in 2010 of its new facility, the Mead Center for American Theatre, also includes a little background on Arena.]

“ZELDA FICHANDLER, VALIANT STRIVER IN THE ARENA”
by Various Authors 

[American Theatre compiled these reminiscences by a number of people who were colleagues of Zelda Fichandler, studied at NYU during her tenure, or were friends of hers, and posted them as a tribute to her legacy on the AT website on 5 August 2016, a week after her death; the memorial didn’t run in the print edition of the magazine.

[The magazine published a formal obituary of Fichandler by Laurence Maslon in the issue of October 2016, as well as a personal note of tribute by AT editor Rob Weinert-Kendt, both of which are included in Part 1 of this post.  (A shortened version of Mason’s obituary appears below as the first of this collection of remembrances.)]

The dynamo who led Arena Stage and NYU Tisch’s acting program was acutely interested in human beings, and what theatre could reveal about them.

Zelda Fichandler, cofounding artistic director of Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. [1950-91], died last week [29 July 2016] at the age of 91. Inarguably one of the pioneers and founding mothers of the American resident theatre movement, Fichandler, in addition to running Arena for four decades, headed [. . .] NYU’s Graduate Acting program in the 1990s [1984-2009] and served as artistic director of the Acting Company [1991-94] after leaving [Arena]. We asked colleagues, collaborators, and students for their thoughts about Fichandler’s unique contribution and legacy. –Ed.

It Was Always Personal

As seen through the frame of American theatre at the midpoint of the 20th century, the idea of Zelda Fichandler as a producer was unlikely casting—or, perhaps, to use a phrase to which we’ll return, nontraditional casting.

Most producers back then were men, inflamed by the hip-hooray and ballyhoo of the commercial theatre. Zelda was as far away from the self-promotional solipsism of a David Merrick [producer; 1911-2000] as you could be and still use the word “producer” to describe them both [some anecdotes that illustrate Maslon’s estimation of Merrick are related in “The Power of the Reviewer—Myth or Fact?: Part 2,” 26 January 2011]. She disdained interviews and couldn’t bear to have her photo plastered in the papers; she’d much rather devote her acute intelligence to a position paper than a press release any day. When a purely commercial opportunity beckoned from a northerly distance, she went screaming in the opposite direction. If, in the 30 years I knew her, both at Arena Stage and at NYU’s [New York University] Graduate Acting Program, she ever hung around for an opening night party, toasting herself with champagne, I never saw it; I’m sure she spent the evening back up in her office, drafting a memo about not-for-profit funding or creating a burgeoning “to-do” list on a pad of yellow legal paper, late into the night.

Not for her the bright marquees or gilded proscenium arches that enthralled the Broadway Bialystocks. Perhaps that’s why she embraced the idea of an arena theatre so passionately: nowhere to hide; the focus on dialogue and discourse; the rethinking of human interaction in cubic space, not the artificial choreography mandated by a box set. For Zelda, the Arena was, first and forever, an arena: a forum where conflicting ideas could be battled out until the last righteous man or woman remained standing.

[The “Broadway Bialystocks,” for those who can’t place Maslon’s invocation, is a reference to Max Bialystock of Bialystock and Bloom. He’s the gonif producer, played in the 2001 Broadway première of the musical The Producers by Nathan Lane (and in the source movie by Zero Mostel), who came up with the idea for Springtime for Hitler and the scam that went with it.]

At the center of those ideas was always the essential instrument for broadcasting passionate thought, the human being—or, in its quotidian representation, the actor. I say this not to denigrate the actor, by any means; I simply mean that Zelda loved people and their problems—their motivations, their contradictions, the “Shadow” that T.S. Eliot [1888-1965; the reference is to lines in “The Hollow Man,” 1925] wrote about which falls between the motion and the act. She was obsessed with the human psyche, and actors were the best way to explore that vast, furrowed landscape. Had she to live her life over again (and it was three normal lifetimes worth), she’d have been a psychoanalyst. I think she was always more interested in actors than characters; characters were limited by even the best playwright’s imagination. Human beings, however, were infinite and circumvented neat or easy conclusions.

That may be why Zelda was always drawn to [Anton] Chekhov [1860-1904], [Arthur] Miller [1915-2005], and [Clifford] Odets [1906-63]; they came closest, in her mind, to capturing the elusive conundrums that human beings bring to real life. She always loved Bessie Berger’s line in Awake and Sing! [Odets, 1935; staged at Arena by Fichandler in 2006; see “Awake and Sing!, et al.,” 3 April 2017]: “We saw a very good movie, with Wallace Beery. He acts like life, very good.” Her taste in playwrights notwithstanding, she was hardly grim or humorless to anyone who knew her; she used to say, “I love a good joke—but it has to be a good joke.” But Zel rarely tried her hand at Molière [1622-73] or [George S.] Kaufman [1889-1961] & [Moss] Hart [1904-61] or musicals; those she left to the extremely capable hands of associates such as Garland Wright [1946-98; artistic director of the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1986-95)] or Douglas C. Wager [b. 1949?; Wager would succeed Fichandler as artistic director of Arena (1991-98)]. I suspect that comedies or musicals simply didn’t intrigue her mind as much; by their very definition, they must always conclude—usually in a happy fashion—and Zelda believed that “real life” always held a next chapter.

Few things made her happier than gossip: She loved it when I, or one of my colleagues, walked into her office and spilled the beans on some post-opening-night tryst or an ongoing affair between classmates that had escaped her attention. These were secret chapters in the lives of people close to her—and the more incongruous the assignation, the better. She always embraced the unexpected as the best possible turn of events.

Her great pleasure was in the unexpected revelation of people. Zelda would kvell her deepest kvells when an acting student made an unforeseen breakthrough in a production [for the goyim: to kvell is Yiddish for ‘to beam with great pride and delight’]. “Wasn’t she amazing?” she’d ask rhetorically (she was big on rhetorical questions), like a career botanist observing the bloom of an exotic flower.

When I first interviewed with her in 1988 for a job at Arena, we attended a visiting production of the [Dublin’s Gate] Theater’s Juno and the Paycock [1924; Sean O’Casey (1880-1964)], directed by Joe Dowling [Irish-born; b. 1948], on Broadway [John Golden Theatre, 21 June-2 July 1988]. (True to form, Zelda loved it and immediately hired Joe—whom she hadn’t met before—to direct the production with the Arena company [4 May-10 June 1990].) As we walked to a restaurant on West 44^th Street afterwards, I nattered on about my meager achievements in the theatre, and I could see Zelda’s eyes glaze over; a recitation of my résumé had clearly not provided enough to spark her prodigious curiosity. A polite but semi-opaque film had been drawn between her and my ambition to work at a great theatre. But, as we were seated at the restaurant, I asked her if we could switch seats, as I was (and am) completely deaf in my left ear.  “Really?” Her ebony eyes swelled behind her immense designer frames. ”Since when?” [This anecdote is told from Dowling’s point of view below.]

The one area that, in my opinion, stymied her was the terrain of multiculturalism. Zelda believed in the flowering of human potential as much as any human being I have ever met. Her efforts in giving opportunities to actors, students, writers, directors, designers, producers of color were second to none during the time in which she had opportunities to wield at her disposal. As early as 1968, she tried to create the first “nontraditional” ensemble in the American theatre. In the 1980s, she took on the challenge with renewed vigor, diversifying the Arena company once again, hiring associate artists such as Tazewell Thompson [director and playwright; b. 1948], commissioning plays by diverse writers with diverse stories, and digging deeply into the ranks of aspiring actors for the graduate program to produce an ensemble that looked like America. Working in tandem with lighting designer Allen Lee Hughes [b. 1946?], she created a fellowship in his name at Arena Stage, an incredible program that has encouraged and developed the next generation of theatre artists of color.

And yet, somehow, I believe Zelda never felt she had done enough in this regard. Ironically, for someone who enjoyed the irresolution of an ambiguous dramatic message, Zelda couldn’t quite bring herself to believe that the diversification of an American art form was—and always will be—a process. Zelda’s can-do resolve wanted to make sure this mission was definitively concluded, but, in this one arena, even Zelda, with her immense will power, couldn’t knit together the warp and woof of human history. It’s an ongoing experiment, and to my mind Zelda has never been given enough credit for what she did manage to achieve in diversifying the American theatre.

I heard that Zelda was not well and that she was declining quickly during the last week of July. On Thursday night [28 July 2016 (at the Democratic National Convention)], I watched Hillary Clinton accept her party’s nomination as president and give a pretty darn good speech (Zel would have had a few notes for her, though). I went to bed and when I awoke early the next morning, I learned that Zel had passed away during the night—about half an hour after Hillary’s exit from the stage in Philadelphia. What timing! Did Zelda, in her serenity, muse to herself: “You know what? I created a major American theatre, the first resident company to send a play to Broadway [The Great White Hope by Howard Sackler (1929-82)], the first to tour the Soviet Union [Our Town and Inherit the Wind to Moscow and Leningrad, 1973], the first to win a Tony Award [special Tony for theatrical excellence¸ 1976], and the first to provide a platform for hundreds of major artists. I transformed an MFA acting program into one of the country’s finest. Let someone else crack a few ceilings for a change: Here you go, the torch is yours.”

[GWH débuted at Arena on 7 December 1967 and ran through 14 January 1968 under the direction of Edwin Sherin (1930-2017).  The production starred James Earl Jones as Jefferson and Jane Alexander as Eleanor Bachman. 

[The production moved to Broadway’s Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon) with the original cast largely intact; it ran from 3 October 1968 to 31 January 1970 for 23 previews and 546 regular performances.  Produced by Herman Levin (1907-90), it won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Drama (Sackler); three 1969 Tony Awards: Best Play (Sackler and Levin), Best Actor in a Play (Jones), Best Featured Actress in a Play (Alexander); and two 1969 Drama Desk Awards: Outstanding Performance (Alexander and Jones), Outstanding Director (Sherin).

[There’s discussion of this play (and the film adaptation) throughout my tribute to Jones, “In Memoriam: James Earl Jones (1931-2024),” 22, 25, and 28 September.

[The trip to Russia was between 27 September and 17 October 1973. Arena traveled with 67 members, including 49 actors; the rest of the company were crew and techies. Thornton Wilder’s (1897-1975) Our Town (1938) and Jerome Lawrence (1915-2004) and Robert E. Lee’s (1918-94) Inherit the Wind (1955) were presented in Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).]

And then, to paraphrase the end of one of Zelda’s beloved Chekhov’s plays: She would rest, she would rest, she would rest. [The play is Uncle Vanya (1897) and the character who’s speaking at the very end of the last act is Sonya.]

Laurence Maslon [b. 1959], arts professor and associate chair of NYU’s Graduate Acting Program

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 A Revolution, Lived Every Moment

Zelda Fichandler was, among so many things, a world-class quoter. Her brilliant, inspirational speeches, her capacious essays, even her letters to government officials and funders, draw quotations from poets, philosophers, physical and social scientists, novelists, lots of Russians, and, of course, playwrights. She wrote and spoke as a reader, because Zelda was forever reading the world, forever studying exactly what it means to be human.

[Fichandler’s affinity for things Russian (e.g.: plays of Chekhov, Russian literature, attraction to Russian theater artists such as Konstantin Stanislavsky and Yuri Lyubimov) probably stems from the fact that her father, Harry Diamond (1900-48), was an immigrant (in 1908) from Russia. (Her mother, the former Ida Epstein (1901?-70), was a Lithuanian immigrant.) Fichandler was an undergraduate at Cornell University (1941-45), where she studied Russian (and was introduced to the works of Chekhov).]

She often quoted this Burmese saying: ”The fish dwell in the depths of the water, and the eagles in the sides of heaven; the one, though high, may be reached with the arrow, and the other, though deep, with the hook; but the heart of man at a foot’s distance cannot be known.” This unknowable “foot’s distance” between one heart and another was, I believe, Zelda’s life’s work. She never lost track of it. In a world of mission drift and purpose distraction, Zelda’s genius was precisely her ability to keep her eyes trained on this infinitely small space, on what was most important.

Yes, the nonprofit art theatre would have grown differently (if it grew at all) had Zelda not shown us the way to realize Margo Jones’s dream of a regional-resident-repertory movement. Yes, the path of new plays into New York might have taken many more years to forge had it not been for Arena’s The Great White Hope in 1968. The acting company ideal—the body and soul of our field’s founding impulse—might have died aborning had she not zealously kept it alive for almost four decades. Yes, we would have needed someone else to integrate theatre in the nation’s capital; to fight for diversity at every level of a major institutional theatre; to inspire a generation of American actors (as she did leading NYU’s graduate acting program); to imagine the theatre field as a field, articulate its values, and then question, question, question the very revolution she incited. It may be too much to say that without Zelda the nonprofit theatre community wouldn’t be here; it’s possible, though, that without her leadership we wouldn’t know what we are here for.

[Margo Jones (1911-55) founded Theatre ’47 (1947-55) in Dallas, Texas. It was the first professional regional company in the United States, and launched the American regional theater movement and introduced theater-in-the-round, also called arena staging, to the country through her book, Theatre-in-the-Round (McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1951).]

I have spent 35 years working in and mapping this movement she created, and, like so many people she influenced, I can’t say for sure whether she created me or just drafted me as an officer in her evangelical army. Have I adopted her sentence structure? Aped her turn of mind? What would my principles have been had I never crossed her path? The time we shared in recent years felt especially intimate. She had enlisted me to help her with a book of her collected speeches and essays, long in the works for Theatre Communications Group [The Long Revolution: Sixty Years on the Frontlines of a New American Theater, 2024; see Part 1]. Later, facing surgery with a difficult period of recovery (she ultimately opted out of the procedure), she asked for my promise to complete the work she feared she’d leave unfinished. It was the easiest promise of my life. For several years then, including from across the country, from D.C. to Seattle [London was on the faculty of the University of Washington in Seattle from 2014 to 2018], we were surrounded by her extensive writing, reading Zelda together—the world according to Zelda. And what a vast, complex, humane world it is!

Art is our mostly doomed attempt to describe life even as we live it. (Here I imagine Zelda, who famously brought Our Town to Russia [see above], quoting Thornton Wilder’s Emily:  ”Oh, Earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?”) I believe that Zelda—as founder, director, producer, teacher, writer, rabbi—sought to do just that: fully realize life while she lived it.

In her final years, she struggled to make sense of the “long revolution” she started. Not content to rest on her accomplishments, Zelda couldn’t stop rewriting. She refused to quote herself. She had to know what was happening now, what was most important now. The work was never done. She could never know enough, could never suspend her ceaseless commitment to realize the unknowable.

Todd London, [former] executive director/professor at University of Washington School of Drama, who [. . .] complete[d] Fichandler’s memoirs[; currently Director of The Legacy Playwrights Initiative for the Dramatists Guild Foundation and a member of the Bridge Executive Ensemble of the Network of Ensemble Theaters]

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The Encouraging Embrace

I came to Arena Stage in 1974 as an intern fresh out of Boston University with my MFA in directing, for a 10-week period to assist Alan Schneider on the world premiere of Elie Wiesel’s play [Zalmen or] The Madness of God [3 May-9 June 1974; directed by Alan Schneider]. Those 10 weeks turned into 25 consecutive years.

Our world has lost a blessed, powerful, tenacious, inspired visionary.

Zelda gave [. . .] so many of us the chance to live and grow within the encouraging embrace of an amazing creative community of possibility. She worked from a deeply feminine understanding of the importance of allowing people working at every level of the organization to feel they could speak up and contribute, but you always knew she held the reins; you were working for an incredibly strong, willful, prodigiously gifted visionary leader.

As I came to know her more personally, I was surprised to discover that she was in certain respects quite shy and somewhat fearful of speaking in public. As a result, she never ever allowed herself to speak extemporaneously; she always prepared her remarks. And the careful thought she devoted to that exercise yielded some of the most amazingly effective, powerfully insightful, and inspiring public addresses, and a body of writing on theatre and its place in the world—theatre as an instrument of civilization no less important to the life of a community than a church, a major library, a museum, or a university.

Though she was inarguably a formidably gifted stage director, directing was never her first love. She derived far more personal satisfaction from shaping the image and the artistic culture of the company and defining its place in society, forever trying to solve the riddle of how best to consummate the artist-to-audience relationship, and of how theatre becomes indispensably important to the daily life of the community.

Arena’s ensemble of resident artists and theatre practitioners thrived within a challenging and rigorous culture of artistic expression fueled by passion and purpose—a collaborative collective of “storytellers” making theatre together, all imbued with her underlying humanistic sense of promulgating hope for the human condition. She touched and opened so many hearts and souls though her work, transforming the lives of artists and audiences alike, and indeed, theatre in America for all posterity.

Zelda defied and triumphed over the crass capitalistic assumption that the professional resident theatre movement she championed was easily dismissed as merely a commercial enterprise that failed to make a profit. She elevated the stature of the art form by prioritizing the centrality of the artist over the necessities of commerce. She pioneered a way to encourage the community to join her in recalibrating the precarious balance between fiscal stability and the pursuit of artistic excellence, reaping priceless profits, not in dollars and cents, but in the hearts and minds of audiences and artists.

I was incredibly fortunate to be selected as her successor following her decision to step down and focus the full force of her creative energies on leading NYU’s Tisch Graduate Acting program. I was both thrilled and incredibly intimidated by the prospect of even attempting to fill her shoes. I remember sharing a moment of self-doubt with her as to whether she was really in fact okay ”passing the torch” to me. She thought for a moment—and forgive me for paraphrasing—she said not to worry: “Maybe you can’t pass the torch; you can only pass the fire.” So she did.

Douglas C. Wager [b. 1949?], [professor] of Theater, Film, and Media Arts at Temple University

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Wise and Questioning

Zelda was a beacon for me. When I completed my six-month active duty in 1957, I was anxious to start my career in the theatre in New York, of course. But something made me investigate what seemed to be a small awakening of theatres in cities around the country. I chose to write to Zelda at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., followed by inquiries to Nina Vance [1914-80; launched the Alley Theatre in Houston, 1947] in Houston, Jules Irving [1925-79]/Herb Blau [1926-2013] in San Francisco [co-founders of the Actor’s Workshop, San Francisco (1952-65)], and K. Elmo Lowe [1899-1971] at the Cleveland Play House [artistic director, 1958-69]]—about five or six in all. The rest replied with a form letter stating that no jobs were available, but Zelda’s answer was personal. Although no jobs were available with her either, she was positive in her encouragement to explore, reach out, and take chances. 

We became good friends. She was always available, even after she took on the challenge of chair of the graduate acting and directing program of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She was wise and questioning; she listened, and her responses to my questions were always enlightened and provocative. She was truthful and insightful and challenging.

Zelda was a pioneer and an artist of deep resources.  She was special to my life and I am grateful for her wisdom and her caring. We were good friends, but she was much more than that to me: inspirational and brave.

Gordon Davidson [1933-2010], founding artistic director, Center Theatre Group [1967-2005] 

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Truth in Contention 

Copernicus [mathematician and astronomer; 1473-1543] tells us: ”At rest, in the middle of everything, is the sun.” For me, it’s Zelda who will always hold that place.

Above all else, I think she valued ideas, and her nurturing radiance was her colossal intellect. When I met her, I was 30 and I believed that my quest, my purpose, was to discover the absolute truth of human existence—that I must uncover some coherent, unalterable kernel that would envelop all the contradictions of human experience. That there was a perfect, unshakable, immovable idea at the center of it all.

It was Zelda who made me understand that I was misguided in believing that the essence of human experience was a pure, indivisible, fixed thing. She taught me that any truthful perception of life would be contained in the creation of ideas, not in a simple thought or a pure feeling or an unchanging belief. An idea was something achieved, or created, by wrestling with experience and learning and was crafted, ever so carefully, over time. Revising, editing, deleting, inserting until it took its true shape. It must first and foremost contain active conflict, contradiction; it must hold opposite, contradictory forces, locked in a never-ending balancing act. She made me see the truth of the world in its contradictions, to be in love with paradox, to be suspicious of those who have answers, and to value those who eternally seek the ultimate truth in questions.

Though her intellect was vast and wide-ranging, it landed, ultimately and inevitably, on theatre. The essence of drama—the conflict of opposing forces or ideas—was how her mind naturally perceived human experience. Where else could she have gone but theatre? Her method of thinking was theatrical. It didn’t happen in solitary mediation; it was deliberation by dialogue. By engaging with other human souls, she found her opinions, her poetry of ideas. She tested her hypotheses on others, she collected her evidence by communicating with people. Of course she loved actors: They are poets who use their bodies and minds to convey ideas and imagery. Their practice of ritual reenactment perfectly matched her own instinctive means of grasping and then communicating the perception of living.

I think her greatest accomplishment might well be her articulation of the importance of the creation of spaces for artists and audiences to meet. Her life’s work of creating, inhabiting, and sustaining vibrant artistic institutions was in itself a distinct artistic practice, as significant as the practice of acting, writing, directing or designing. She made me understand that every last detail of an audience member’s experience of a space is an artistic question. To her, from the very first impression of a production that a potential audience member received to the parking of their car, from the experience of picking up a ticket to the ambience of the bathrooms—these were all vital concerns of the artistic director. And not in the customer-service sense, but in how these experiences impact the expectations and mood of the audience member as they sit down in their seat to experience the work of the artists at hand.

Ultimately she believed that human relationships based on true, deep listening to each other were not only the building blocks for creating art, but are the essence of all human endeavor. She believed that we only find the light and the truth in each other.

It’s hard to accept that my own personal sun, my Zelda, has set with some ultimate finality. I will have to believe that some of her essence radiates on still, and enlightens the dark world, in and by the many, many of us who were shaped by her, who must live on now without her.

James Nicola [b. 1950], artistic director, New York Theater Workshop [1988-2022]

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An Illuminating Force 

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was what their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from the head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.
—Stephen Spender [British;1909-95; “The Truly Great” (1928)]

It is very clear: I am a lucky so-and-so. I was born under a most propitious star. The planets were all brilliantly aligned. Jupiter was ablaze somewhere in the midheavens, rising in my tenth house of great expectations, as a comet’s tail passed over conjunct or trined or sextiled with mercury, making me a student for life, interminably conscious of receiving and filtering good news and glad tidings—birthed in double Gemini, with a new moon in Capricorn. This cosmic milky way formation would lead me on a life path journey that would connect me, in the still formative period of my life, to she who would shape mist into substance: Zelda Fichandler.

[In astrology, trined denotes two celestial bodies 120° apart (¹/₃ of a circle). Sextiled denotes two celestial bodies separated by 60° (¹/₆ of a circle).]

Zelda was a dear friend, mentor and mother figure. She brought me to Arena Stage in 1988. It changed my life. We wrote letters/cards/notes to each other—even though sometimes in the same building, on the same floor—for almost 30 years. We spoke by phone, endlessly or in short spurts on a wild variety of topics, several times a month, and in the last years, two to three times a week. She provided me with a reading list of plays and authors I must want to know. She entertained me with memorized lyrics of standards from the 1930s and ’40s. She read drafts of my plays, giving me incisive, perceptive, and cogent notes. She dramaturged all my productions while near at Arena Stage, from NYU or the Acting Company, and from as far as Cape Town and Tokyo. Despite a horrific argument many years ago over my wanting to work independently elsewhere and her insisting I stay within the company as an associate, we became deep close friends. I will love and miss her forever.

Zelda: complex, tough, tender, inspiring, imaginative, inventive, erudite, difficult, unique, caring, loving, political, brilliant, brave, bold, tenacious, remarkable, renegade, witty, relentless, stylish, classy, resilient, empathetic, fallible, uncompromising, vulnerable, visionary, vain, genius, magician, phoenix, soulful, radiant, transcendent, splendid.

And now the planets have clashed and the whole world has shifted. Out of a chaotic sky and the times teeming with lightning; leaning in sorrow, in the saddened aftermath of your passing, artists are left dashed, shocked and shivering, fending for ourselves, reaching for the eternal dream and the transitory light you left us. How are we to catch our breath again?

We receive you and with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us,
We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us,
We fathom you not—we love you—there’s perfection in you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.

—Walt Whitman [1819-92; “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (published under the title “Sun-Down Poem” in 1856, then under its final title in 1860)]

Tazewell Thompson [b. 1948], playwright/director, former artistic director of Westport Country Playhouse [2006-07] and Syracuse Stage [1992-95]

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Words Well Chosen

I first met Zelda in 1985 when I joined the board of Arena Stage. We worked together for many years at Arena, then at the Acting Company, and then on the board of Theatre Communications Group. After she moved to New York to chair the graduate acting program at NYU, our professional friendship gradually evolved into a more personal friendship, nourished over many dinners where we talked about art, but also about love and marriage and the many complexities of human behavior that we experienced as women. We were both very private people, so it was a friendship that grew slowly as we built trust and a shared compassion for our own lives, as well as the lives of others.

As I got to know Zelda, I never ceased to be amazed at the integrity of her mind and spirit. In a field that feeds on words, she never used words carelessly. Every time she wrote a new paper or speech or even started exploring new ideas, her thinking was original. She started fresh, building on her past thoughts but never rehashing them. Her vision was wide, but she always spoke to the personal, particularly to the artists she cherished. For her, the artists and the art were one.

In the past few years, as her health declined, we talked on the phone or I visited when I was in Washington. We still talked about art. She was putting her papers together in book form [this is undoubtedly The Long Revolution] and was reaching to understand the rapid changes in the field today. She read everything and was synthesizing it into her own long view of the field. She was not able to finish this work before she became so ill. But it was always on her mind, and she never lost her curiosity or passion for the theatre.

Zelda revolutionized the field of theatre and led it forward for many decades as our most articulate spokesperson. But she also touched peoples’ lives in very personal ways, inspiring students, sustaining artists, and engaging audiences. We have all been deeply enriched by her. I will miss her dearly as a mentor and a friend.

[Jaan Whitehead also wrote “Art Will Out” for American Theatre. It’s posted on ROT as “‘Art Will Out,’ Part 1,” 3 August 2024.]

 Jaan Whitehead, trustee emeritus and former board chair of SITI Company

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Mayor of Our Theatre Capital

I got my book back from Zelda this week at her shiva [in Judaism, a period of seven days’ formal mourning for the dead]. She left it waiting for me at the top of a pile in her study. It was a book that meant a lot to us both: Arthur Miller’s [1915-2005] autobiography, Timebends [Grove/Atlantic, 1987]. She asked me for it about four years ago, as she wanted to study it for her own memoir—to understand its associative structure, hurtling from memory to memory in psychoanalytic unity, threaded together by the writer’s intention to figure himself out, almost never in chronological order. It appealed to her in the profoundest of ways—to be psychologically true; to seek structural innovation—because the essential business of reflecting the world, her world, from the inside and out, required a form to fit the largeness of the vision.

Such was Zelda’s probing intention throughout her life: to question and to build, at one and the same time, a framework for celebrating and interrogating the meaning of life as rendered by artists; to build a civic center for world drama that might also be called a home, though it was much less “homey” than it was a capital, a cradle of theatrical primacy, where the actor, the writer, the director, all shared power in different ways, like a government—a little federal municipality of the arts. And Zelda was its president/mayor/presiding officer for half a century.

Around the apartment on Calvert Street yesterday were articles and cover stories of note about Zelda. The first that caught my eye was a major interview with her in American Theatre magazine from March of 1991, a month after the closing of Born Guilty [20 January-3 March 1991], which she directed after a two-year development process—the only world premiere of an American play she would ever direct in her lifetime. I was the playwright. And as I’ve written before, we grew closer after the project’s workshop and premiere than we were beforehand or during the crucible of its launching (it’s often the other way around—relationships with directors can fade as everyone moves on). But she proved to be a mentor later rather than sooner, as I became a producer; her words grew wiser and more profuse as I matured in my ambitions. She only seemed to warm to those ambitions, and to me, more and more, and more and more personally in the writing that she shared.

And over these last years, as she continued to battle through pain and write profoundly, and associatively, in an often unwieldy way, we both kept wondering when I would get my book back; she would promise to bring it to the theatre, but then not be able to make it. I didn’t have the heart to ask for it on my last visit, with Howard Shalwitz [b. 1952?; co-founder of Washington’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in 1980], toward the very end. But three weeks later, we were back, and it was waiting there, at the top of the pile, my name inside the front cover, her primacy as an architect of the American theatre movement—and as a frequent partner to our other departed giant mentor, Arthur Miller—very much secure. All was in its place: her place in our lives, and hopefully, ours in hers. She knew she was loved, and she knew what she had achieved. What would last? Whither our direction? These were the continuing questions she would force us to think about for the rest of our lives.

[Ari Roth was the subject of a post on this blog concerning freedom of expression: “The First Amendment & The Arts, Redux,” 13 February 2015.]

Ari Roth [b. 1961], [founder and former] artistic director, Mosaic Theater Company [2014-2020] 

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The Mother of Us All

Zelda Fichandler is the mother of us all in the American theatre. It was her thinking as a seminal artist and architect of the not-for-profit resident theater that imagined resident theatres creating brilliant theatre in our own communities—a revolutionary idea. Her thinking and her writing have forged the way we were created and the resident nature of our movement. She is irreplaceable, but lives on in every single not-for-profit theatre in America—now more than 1,500 strong. Her legacy stretches from coast to coast.

Arthur Miller wrote in the preface to Arena’s 40th anniversary keepsake book (The Arena Adventure[: The First 40 Years by Laurence Maslon (Applause Theatre Book Publishers, 1990)]) that Arena had the makings of a national theatre for the U.S. Without Zelda and Margo Jones and Nina Vance, there would not be this robust American theatre landscape. It was a vision like Zelda’s that could lead to a time where my vision at Arena for American work can thrive. She had a remarkable openness to new ideas, and most of all to always, always support the artist.”

Molly Smith, [former] artistic director, Arena Stage [1998-2023]

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Persistence of Vision 

A week after the opening of my production of Juno and the Paycock at Broadway’s Golden Theatre in June 1988, the phone rang in my Dublin office. “This is Zelda Fichandler and I have just seen your production, and I want you to direct it for our company at Arena Stage.” While flattered that she might consider me for such a task, I immediately refused, arguing that I couldn’t possibly recreate such an Irish production with American actors. Zelda never knew how to take no for an answer. For some weeks after that, she called regularly, and finally I agreed to visit Arena Stage with our set designer, Frank Hallinan Flood.

As soon as we entered that magical space, we knew that we had to create the production there [4 May-10 June 1990]. The Arena company, led by Tana Hicken [b. 1944] and Halo Wines [1939-2021], were magnificent, and I had the pleasure of working closely with Zelda on a number of subsequent productions at Arena. I have been forever grateful to Zelda that she was so persistent in her pursuit. Because of her I had the chance to develop an American career that I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams.

Persistence was one of Zelda’s most enduring qualities, among so many others. She was also fearless, wise, and filled with a passion for theatre, for writers, for actors, and above all for her Washington audiences.

Zelda was one of that amazing generation of artists who, seeing a huge vacuum in theatre outside New York, resolved to change matters themselves. The courage Zelda and her contemporaries showed is hard to imagine now, with the resident theatre movement spread from coast to coast. When Zelda, Tom Fichandler [1915-97], and Ed Ma[ng]um [1913-2001] began Arena in the early ‘50s, there was no map and very little precedent to follow. As Zelda herself said so eloquently:

It was, as I say, miscellaneous, whimsical, as whimsical as falling in love: a something that you can’t evade, you can’t avoid, you can’t dodge, you can’t go around. You don’t listen to your parents. You think all obstacles are mythological and that you’re going to have this thing, love, this person you love, this idea, at whatever cost. Your life is made in those moments. It’s a moment of self-donation: “I give myself to this.” So in a very lighthearted but serious way, that’s how it happened.

However whimsical the beginning, the achievement was extraordinary and enduring. Her tenacity and courage, combined with her artistry, were the ideal characteristics to make her the leader of a vital national movement. Her appetite for new work, for reinventing the classics and for the ideal of an acting company working closely together over multiple seasons, made Arena Stage a leader in the burgeoning resident theatre movement.

Zelda’s promotion of young artists came from a deep passion for education and a real understanding of the need young artists have for mentorship. Her tenure as chair of the graduate acting program at the Tisch School at NYU was notable for the range of diverse and skilled actors she encouraged. Her artistic directorship of the Acting Company was a further example of her devotion to young talent. Like me, there are many people working in the American theatre who owe a great debt to this amazing visionary. Her legacy is to be seen in theatres throughout the country. We have all reason to be grateful for her work and her life. She was a unique spirit and may she rest in peace.

Joe Dowling [b. 1948], former artistic director of the Guthrie Theater [1995-2015]

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Her Leap of Faith, and Mine

Zelda would have us imagine. She would have us do it with courage, drive, and purpose, but she would have us begin there. And above all, she would have us take that leap with faith. She knew this was why humans need theatre: to give ground to our imagination, and in doing so to keep growing new iterations of ourselves in all our wild fragility. But she would go further: She would have what we experience in the harbor of the theatre inspire us to live better lives outside that harbor than the ones we lived before entering.

It was her mission to us whom she guided through NYU’s Graduate Acting Program between 1984 and 2009. In our first semester, we would have class with her. We would lie on the floor and finish the phrase, “As if . . .”—as if I were a carpenter, as if I were taller, as if I were to reinvent regional theatre, as if the color of one’s skin were irrelevant to one’s ability to play a part . . . . things like that. In her speech at the beginning of each school year, clad in her tailored leather suits, hair perfectly colored and coiffed, this titanic spirit in the tiny frame would quote [French Symbolist poet and playwright Guillaume] Apollinaire [1880-1918] and invite us to “come to the edge,” afraid of falling, so that we might be pushed off, and only then find our wings—and in turn, our faith.

I had never had an acting class until after I’d been accepted into NYU midway through my senior year of undergrad; I was a science major but squeezed Acting 101 into my final semester so that I might not be wholly unprepared going into what Zelda had helped turn into one of the nations’ top actor training programs. I was very, very green. But for some reason I could feel her faith in me. In a way that is characteristic of great theatre, she used her eagle eyes to show me who I was with both a potentially painful yet ultimately uplifting honesty, saying things like, “You’re a woman now. You weren’t one when you entered this program, but you are now. It’s wonderful to see.”

She taught me to find the inner strength to ask for what I wanted, though I was accustomed to the opposite—to accepting whatever I got without complaint. So I took the lesson: At the end of my second year, I sat in her office and said, “I’d like to play a leading lady. I think I’m ready to do that now.” She smiled and said, “Okay,” or something to that effect. When I saw our casting for the third year, she’d given me exactly what I’d asked for: the lead in Romantic Roulette, Laurence Maslon’s adaptation of [Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de] Marivaux’s [1688-1763] The Game of Love and Chance [1730]. (If only it were still that easy . . .)

Her faith in me continued after I graduated in 1997. By the time we’d finished three years of school, my self-confidence had been painstakingly rebuilt—only to be broken again at the very end when I did not get an agent out of the showcase. I had very few meetings with casting directors, and hardly any auditions for months. I was despairing and terrified much of the time, full of questions with no answers, thinking I had no future in the American theatre. (I learned soon afterwards that if you don’t know what your future is as an actor for only a few months, you’re in great shape.)

And then, in late October of that year, Zelda was holding auditions for her production of Uncle Vanya at her seminal co-creation, the Arena Stage [12 December 1997-18 January 1998]. I auditioned for Sonya, the part I had played in grad school, and she chose me. I could breathe again. Not only that, but during the run, Doug Wager, then Arena’s artistic director, pulled me into his office and said, “Zelda’s giving you an award.” I was deeply puzzled. I remember saying something to the effect of, “What? Why?” As green as I still was, she had given me the Rose Robinson Cowan Acting Fellowship, in recognition of my promise and potential as a future actor of the American theatre.

I was stunned. I did not thank her properly. To this day I have yet to thank her properly, though I’m grateful to this publication for offering me the chance to try. With Vanya, she didn’t just give me a job, or a part that remains one of my most beloved of all time. She didn’t simply give me my entrance into Actor’s Equity, the start to my career, or an award I’d barely had the chance to earn. She gave me something far greater: her faith. [Actors’ Equity Association, known as Equity or Actors’ Equity, is the union that represents stage actors and theatrical stage managers in the United States.] And by doing so she restored mine. Bestowed with the belief she had in me, I began to once again believe I might belong in the world I’d dreamt of inhabiting since I was a child. She imagined I might become someone worthy of this award, and she did it with the same matter-of-fact knowingness with which she seemed to do everything—as if she could see the preordained and knew how to will it into being.

A person like that is rare; a woman with the power to use these gifts for the greater good more so (though less and less rare these days). She seemed to both know this and disregard it at the same time. Because her driving force was the knowledge she sought to instill in all of us that in the end, no individual performance, no single accomplishment, is greater than that which it serves: the story which encompasses us all. Whatever work I continue to have in the theatre, it is in no small part due to Zelda. More importantly, I have been infused with the idea that my work is not mine to keep—that it is my responsibility and privilege to be an “actor citizen,” one whose artistic and civic efforts mesh in order to advance a deeper common understanding, and therefore a greater civilization. I take this privilege seriously, and it gives me great joy. (Aw, man—yet more ideas for which I wish I could thank this great lady.)

Though I imagine she can hear me.

Angel Desai [b. 1972], actor

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A Lingering Joy 

“Are you hearing me?”

Zelda used to say this, looking up from her notes behind fabulous glasses, as she delivered all-school speeches to us, her MFA students in the late 1990s. She wasn’t being stern. She was giving us a chance to configure ourselves in the present moment, something we were learning to do as actors too. Her speeches somehow managed to be inspiring orations and intimate ruminations at the same time.

Her positive impression lingers in so many places and for so many people. For me one of the enduring joys of my attempts in the theatre has been to discover Zelda’s presence in my present moments, reminding me that acting is being private in public; that theatre, like politics, is local; and that a maroon leather suit is something to strive to wear when one is 70.

I heard Zelda again when I picked up the phone and called her about two months ago. I was working on Nora in A Doll’s House [Brooklyn’s Theatre for a New Audience, 30 April-12 June 2016; see “TFANA’S Scandinavian Rep: A Doll’s House and The Father,” 13 June 2016, on ROT]. Zelda’s former colleague, our mutual friend, and NYU’s resident smarty-pants, Larry Maslon, had generously given me some research material of Zelda’s from her production of A Doll’s House [2 March-8 April 1990; the Arena translation, by Irene Berman and Gerry Bamman, used the title A Doll House]. I told her I missed her and that I think about her often. She told me that was nice to hear.

Maggie Lacey, actor

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Falling and Flying 

My first professional audition, in 1983, was a general call for Washington, D.C., area theatres, held at the Arena Stage. I had just graduated from college, and a hot summer of sweltering lawn care employment and living in my old bedroom in my parents’ house had made me start wondering if the world was going to be impressed that I had played Prospero [central character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest] and Falstaff [this character appears in three Shakespearean plays:  Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2, and The Merry Wives of Windsor] at 20. Something told me they already had people for those roles out here in the real world.

I practiced my monologue over and over in the Arena parking lot (I can’t remember if I went with Prospero or Falstaff). In a frenzy of nervous energy, I climbed up onto an open dumpster sitting in the parking lot. Seemed like a thing to do. I sat up there, looking out upon the world, madly Shakespearing. I was feeling pretty good, until I saw the most forbidding human form I’d ever seen striding toward me. Zelda Fichandler, the queen of D.C. theatre, the leader of the pack, the Grand Duchess, the One. I couldn’t move. She walked past me—it turns out she wasn’t looking at me at all, but at the theatre. I was relieved. The last thing I wanted was to get in trouble with the Great Zelda on my first day of incipient professionalism. I thought I’d escaped her notice until I heard a clear, ironic voice:  “Don’t fall in!”

During my high school years in the Virginia suburbs of D.C., I saw many, many plays at the Arena. I didn’t realize then that I was the beneficiary of Zelda’s groundbreaking work (along with Margo Jones in Dallas and Nina Vance in Houston), more or less inventing the regional theatre in America. I didn’t know that these three women had basically founded a real national theatre in America (I propose replacing “regional” in this case with “national”—less condescending, and more accurate), one that lives and breathes with the genuine voices and talents of the whole country, most of it far away from midtown Manhattan. I took it for granted that I could drag my mother or father to Southwest D.C. to see Shakespeare or Miller or Wilder, to have my life changed by great actors like Robert Prosky [1930-2008], Stanley Anderson [1939-2018], Halo Wines, Tana Hicken, and the great, anarchic genius Richard Bauer [1939-99]. That’s where I started forming the idea that my lifelong hobby might become my actual life. I was watching these people do it, gloriously, in front of me.

And I got to see Randy Danson [b. 1950] fly. The first Chekhov play I ever saw was Zelda’s luminous production of The Three Sisters, in the early 1980s [20 January-26 February 1984]. The production was hilarious and heartbreaking, comforting and shocking. Alexander Okin’s environmental set was like a crazy, intricate country of its own. I happened to be sitting near the corner where Mark Hammer’s [1937-2007] Chebutykin lazed and laughed and drank and cried in his little “room.” Unforgettable. I vividly remember Marilyn Caskey’s hilariously self-absorbed Natasha, Henry Strozier’s dutiful and sad Kulygin, Henry Stram’s [b. 1954] tortured Andre[i], Halo Wines’s rock-of-Gibraltar Olga. But what I really remember is that Randy Danson flew. In the final act, when the soldiers are saying goodbye to the Prozorov family, Randy (as Masha) was quietly weeping in one corner of the vast Arena space, comforted by her sisters. Her life—or that part of it that held passionate possibility—seemed over. Now on the other side of the huge stage the solders came in for one last goodbye before moving to another camp. The stage got quiet as Stanley Anderson (Vershinin) stood looking across at the women. No one spoke. I didn’t breathe.

Suddenly Randy Danson was running—and I mean running—across the stage toward Anderson’s Vershinin. He was standing frozen. And while still far away from him—in my memory it’s half the stage, but how could that be true?—she leapt.  She flew. And on the other end of that flight, Vershinin caught her in his arms. The world, my heart, time itself—all seemed to stop. When they embraced, I remember an audible, involuntary collective shout coming from the audience, a communal expression of joy and sadness and recognition. I’ve never seen anything like it in the theater, before or since. Maybe it was different from how I remember it, but hey, as [Tennessee] Williams [1911-83] said:  “The play is memory” [The Glass Menagerie (1944), Act 1, scene 1].

Some years later, long after I didn’t fall into the dumpster, I got to work on The Three Sisters with Zelda and the brilliant Paul Walker [1952-93] with the Acting Company. I told Zelda about seeing that Arena production and its impact on me. She seemed moved that I’d been so taken with her Three Sisters. ”Well, that’s what these great plays do for us. That’s what they’re here for.”

But someone has to understand those great plays, and take the care and effort and sweat and love to bring them forward. Somebody has to understand that they are essential, and that when we put them out there, and do it well, somehow the world is changed. Zelda knew. She famously said that she had started the Arena with an envelope full of index cards listing the people she knew in Washington, D.C., who might want to put on plays: actors, writers, designers, stage managers, possible patrons. She opened the envelope and got to work.

She spent her life making people fly through the air, making sure there was someone to catch them, and making sure there were people to witness it all, so we could all live through it together. Thanks to Zelda and a few other pioneers, the American theatre—the American national theatre—is busy doing its work, and making itself known all over the country in big venues and small, pushing and prodding and striving every day to reveal and celebrate the essential, aggravating, joyous, sad, exalted truth of our collective humanity. Zelda strove her whole life to illuminate that humanity. To paraphrase the great woman herself, that’s what she did for us. That’s what she was here for. And I’m so grateful to her for opening that envelope. 

Andrew Weems [1961-2019], actor and teacher