“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.]
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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.]
