"Don’t Say 'Macbeth' . . . And other superstitions, traditions and secrets of the theater world"

by Juan A. Ramírez

[On 14, 17, 20, and 23 August 2020, I posted a four-part series called “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms: Theater Superstitions” on Rick On Theater (the link is to the first installment).  Three months ago, in T, its magazine dedicated to fashion, living, beauty, holiday, travel, and design coverage that’s published 11 times a year, the New York Times published an article on a similar topic, but also covering some of the personal traditions in which theater folk engage behind the scenes. 

[Juan A. Ramirez’s article on some of these peculiar customs (including some I covered in my post) was published in T: The New York Times Style Magazine on 17 November 2025; it was posted on the paper’s website as “Don’t Say ‘Macbeth’ and Other Strange Rituals of the Theater World” on 8 November.]

Pulling back the curtain on the theater world’s strange rituals and enduring superstitions.

You may not have realized it, but there’s little chance you’ve heard anyone whistle inside a theater. In the old days, sailors often worked the ropes backstage, bringing to show business codes like command whistles. So a whistle meant as a compliment, or to get a person’s attention, might have landed a piece of scenery on someone’s head.

Theater is full of these customs — many arising, like most rituals, from hazy origins. Still, show people hold on to them. In an industry that hopes to conjure the same wonder every night (with wildly different results), there’s comfort in tradition, especially if it reaches back decades or even centuries. Some, as the 56-year-old Broadway wardrobe supervisor and costume designer Patrick Bevilacqua [The Great Gatsby (2024-Present)] says, are “rituals of consistency” — the private fist bumps or helpful Listerine sprays during a backstage quick change, which must be “choreographed within an inch of its life” to keep the show running smoothly. Others are spiritual; according to the actress Lea Salonga [Miss Saigon (1991-2001): Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical, Theatre World Award; Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends (upcoming in April)], 53, “any practice where everyone can see each other as human” is necessarily grounding.

Some are individual: The actor Hugh Jackman [The Boy From Oz (2003-04): Tony for Best Actor in a Musical, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical, Theatre World Award; ], 56, last seen as the lead in “The Music Man” [2022-23] on Broadway in 2023, buys scratch-off lottery tickets for each production member every Friday; occasionally, someone wins a few hundred dollars. Some are secretive, like stealing costumes after a show closes, while others are blared through the house, as when stage managers announce on loudspeakers before a performance, “It’s Saturday night on Broadway,” a reminder that the wearying workweek is almost over.

Length dictates quantity: Longer-running productions are more likely to develop more idiosyncratic traditions. This means that in New York, Broadway is more ritualistic than Off, and musicals outmatch straight plays for the same reason. The 64-year-old actress Amra-Faye Wright [Chicago (1996-Present)], for example, has for about a decade been painting murals each season backstage for “Chicago,” the second-longest-running musical in Broadway history [the current production has run 11,105 regular performances (as of 16 February)], which opened in 1975 [until 1977] and has been up since its 1996 revival [Wright was in it 2006-24]. All agree that London is more laid-back, despite having some quirks, such as everyone in the cast and crew banging on the windows facing the National Theatre’s interior courtyard on opening night; or the Baddeley cake, an intricately decorated and frosted dessert that varies from show to show but has been served with punch at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, every Jan. 6 since 1795. It’s named after Robert Baddeley [1733-94; best known for playing Moses in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal], an actor who played minor roles there and who in his will bequeathed funds for the annual festivity.

As the 43-year-old British director Michael Longhurst [artistic director of London’s Donmar Warehouse theater (2019-2024; directed Broadway transfer of Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change (2020-21), which originated at Chichester Festival Theatre); nominated for Tony for Best Revival of a Musical, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Musical] says, most are “a mix of the practical and superstitious.” Actors tell one another to break a leg — maybe because “good luck” is gauche; maybe because they’re an understudy wishing a principal would just bow out; maybe because a theater’s “legs” are the thin drapes that frame the stage, which you’d cross if receiving an ovation; or maybe just because they know it’s a phrase they ought to keep alive.

It’s like when the actress Patti LuPone [Evita (1979-83): Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical; Anything Goes (1987-89): Drama Desk for Outstanding Actress in a Musical; Gypsy (2008-09): Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, Drama Desk for Outstanding Actress in a Musical; Company (2021-22): Tony for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical, Drama Desk for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical; Theatre World’s John Willis Award for Lifetime Achievement (2021)], 75, was given some of Ethel Merman’s [1908-84] jewels by the wardrobe supervisor Adelaide Laurino [1929-2003] to wear in the Broadway musical “Evita” in 1979. She didn’t just steal them because . . . well, who wouldn’t? She stole them because, as she says, “these will be passed down, but [the recipient] won’t be given the information that will be lost to time.”

Cards From the Neighbors and a Telegram From Bette Midler

It’s grueling work to get a play ready, which is why there’s a collective sense of celebration when a new show opens. For the past few decades, the casts and companies of Broadway productions have signed cards bearing their shows’ logos, then sent them to the newest show on its opening night. What were once couriered over were later faxed and are now sometimes sent as PDFs that are printed out by stage managers. While some shows keep them up throughout their run, most are displayed about as long as Christmas cards.

Aside from these well wishes, companies can expect gifting tables backstage full of presents from their producers and admirers and from one another. These can range from bottles of Champagne and homemade cookies to elaborate offerings like branded bomber jackets, tote bags and alarm clocks. Before the pandemic, Tiffany key chains featuring a show’s artwork would often be distributed in New York. The American actress Marisha Wallace [Aladdin (2014-Present); Something Rotten! (2015-17)], 39, who works mostly in London, says that British openings are not “as extravagantly gifted because U.K. people aren’t really gifters.” She learned this when she showed up to “Dreamgirls” in 2016 [Savoy Theatre, West End, through 2019] with T-shirts and personalized mugs for everyone, only to receive cookies in return. (Brits do, however, enjoy closing-night gifts.)

Personalized presents, as always, are the most appreciated. Salonga, who will return to Broadway in the Stephen Sondheim revue “Old Friends” next spring, remembers her first starring role (at 9 in 1980 as Annie in the musical’s Manila premiere), when her aunt gave her a small brass elephant. She now collects these figurines in her dressing room, pointing them toward the stage for good luck. The actress Tracie Bennett [End of the Rainbow (2012): Tony nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play, Theatre World], 63, still marvels at the books — some filled with recipes inspired by the production — that Denis O’Hare [Take Me Out (2003-04): Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Play, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play; Sweet Charity (2005): Drama Desk for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical], 62, gave to his co-stars in Sondheim’s posthumous Off Broadway show, “Here We Are,” last year at the Shed [2023-24] in New York: “He didn’t need to do it,” she says, “and that’s the point!”

LuPone, a self-described “instinctual archivist,” keeps many opening-night tokens in a curio cabinet at her Connecticut home, including an “Evita” death mask and an egg filled with small wooden statuettes of the actors from the 1987 revival of “Anything Goes” and mounted on a music box. The 46-year-old actress Mandy Gonzalez [In the Heights (2008-11): Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance], now appearing in the Broadway revival of “Sunset Boulevard” [2024-Present], has long kept two significant gifts: a Western Union telegram sent by Bette Midler [b. 1945], for whom she used to sing backup, the first time Gonzalez originated a role on Broadway, in 2002’s “Dance of the Vampires” [through 2003]; and an iPod engraved with a message from Yoko Ono [b. 1933] for the 2005 premiere of the musical “Lennon” [2005].

Another backstage tradition was started by Alyce Gilbert, 81, who in 2007 became the only wardrobe supervisor to be honored with a Tony [Tony Honor for Excellence in Theatre], along with the late dresser Bobbye Sue Albrecht. Gilbert’s first Broadway show was the memorable run of “A Chorus Line” at the Shubert Theatre in 1975 [through 1990 (6,137 performances)]. When Bob Fosse’s “Dancin’” [1978-92 (1,774 performances)] stole several of that production’s members three years later, she and Albrecht procured a glass candy jar, spelled “Dancin’Wardrobe” on its lid with stick-on letters and took it next door to the Broadhurst. “It was the first time anyone had sent something that was really for the wardrobe department,” Gilbert says. Almost five decades later, she’s sent a jar to most musicals, and some plays, on their opening night. Filled with peppermints — they’re good for the throat and, unlike chocolates, won’t stain costumes — the jars remain in the wardrobe department for all to enjoy; crew members take them home, or to their next show, upon closing. Bevilacqua, the wardrobe supervisor for Broadway’s “The Great Gatsby,” says that collecting them has become an industry badge of honor.

You Must Touch the Robe

One of Broadway’s most regimented traditions has an impressive musical theater pedigree: In 1950, a chorus member on “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” [1949-51]. took a robe from a fellow chorine and sent it to a friend who was opening that night in the ensemble of “Call Me Madam” [1950-52] starring Ethel Merman [1908-84; Call Me Madam: Tony for Best Actress in a Musical; Hello, Dolly! (1964-70): Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance; Special Tony Award for her lifetime contributions to show business (1972)]. The recipient later added a cloth cabbage rose from Merman’s costume to the pale pink robe and gave it to a chorus member in the next opening musical, “Guys and Dolls” [1950-53], and an informal ritual was born. Since they traveled so quickly from contract to contract, Broadway dancers were often called “gypsies,” so the similarly itinerant garment was called the Gypsy Robe until 2018, when members of the union Actors’ Equity Association voted to rename it the Legacy Robe. [See my post “The Gypsy Robe” (4 November 2012).]

Equity had taken over the robe’s distribution long before then [1982], codifying the rules when it became obvious it was being improperly handled or accounted for, awarded based on popularity or bogged down by heavy additions such as shoes. These days, the robe is presented on the opening night of a Broadway musical to the ensemble member with the most Broadway chorus credits. An elaborate ceremony — which occurs half an hour before curtain, with the entire company (and past recipients) invited to attend — is led by the robe’s previous caretaker, who recites an Equity-written speech before revealing its new keeper. Once outfitted, that person circles the stage counterclockwise three times as each cast member reaches out to touch the robe for good luck. Then there’s a dash through the theater as the recipient visits each dressing room to bless the production.

The performer Jeffrey Schecter, 51, held back tears while receiving his second robe when a revival of “Once Upon a Mattress” [2024] opened this past August. [Schechter received his first robe, then still called the Gypsy Robe, for Fiddler on the Roof (2015-16).] Katie Webber, 43, who presented him with the robe that she’d received for “The Great Gatsby” [2024-Present] says the tradition not only honors the performers who form the backbone of any Broadway musical but also speaks to the profession’s unsteady, nice-work-if-you-can-get-it nature: “The longer I’m in this business, the more I’m shocked I’m still working.”

The wardrobe supervisor oversees the application of their production’s panel to the robe, which often bears the name of its recipient and includes signatures from all cast members. Bevilacqua says he likes to incorporate costume trims so that “in 100 years, people can see these were the fabrics we were using.” Once a robe is filled up, it’s archived by Equity, although a few of the 35 or so robes have been retired to the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, the Museum of the City of New York and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The robe that Schecter recently received had denim patches representing the down-home sensibilities of the previous season’s “Shucked” [2023-24], and there was also a black panel from the 2023 “Sweeney Todd” revival [through 2024] on one of the robe’s floor-length sleeves with a line on it from the show in blood-red yarn: “At last, my right arm is complete again.”

Falling Pigs, Dollar Fridays and Other Diversions

All productions must find ways to make coming to work every day fun and surprising. The wardrobe crew on the 2024 Tony-winning play “Stereophonic” [2024-25] started an odd tradition in which cast and crew members take turns dropping a five-inch-long silicone pig down the four flights of the John Golden Theatre’s stairwell when the actors receive their five-minute “places” call before the second act. Many people begin lending libraries of favorite books. During his ongoing stint in the musical “Hadestown” [2019-Present] the actor Jordan Fisher [Hamilton (2015-Present); Dear Evan Hansen (2016-22); Sweeney Todd (2023-24)], 30, also created his own more unique communal space: a stageside calibration station that acts as a type of shrine to which the company contributes crystals, stones, toys and flowers. According to Wallace, many London companies play a game in which everyone affixes a baby picture to the wall and then attempts to guess who’s who.

But the most widespread — and lucrative — activity is Dollar Fridays, a raffle that Bevilacqua half-jokes is “where we make our money.” The rules are simple: Someone (typically the production stage manager) passes around a kitty before the Friday evening performance; anyone is welcome to pitch in a dollar or more with their name written on it. Variations occur: Whole dressing rooms can enter as a unit, and famous actors are known to chip in extra. The winner is announced later in the evening — some productions do it during intermission — usually by the person organizing it. Certain shows allow participants to use Venmo. “But then,” laments the 43-year-old former “Stereophonic” stage manager, Erin Gioia Albrecht [A Strange Loop (2022--23)], “you can’t spread the dollar around the Theater District.”

A Bright Light to Ward Off Accidents — and Spirits

A ghost light is an exposed bulb that the head electrician or another crew member leaves center stage after hours so that nobody falls and hurts themselves in the dark. But for those with one foot in the supernatural world — and, as Albrecht says, “it’s certainly a superstitious industry” — the light is there to keep evil spirits away . . . or to provide friendly ghosts with a pleasant overnight experience. Many believe that every house on Broadway, the West End and beyond is haunted by any number of specters: the theater’s original owner, making sure that things are running smoothly; an aggrieved actor, still out for that final bow; a doomed showgirl, cursed to remain in destiny’s chorus. [Refer to my post on “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms,” referenced above: Part 1 explains the ghost light, and Parts 3 and 4 recount many theater ghost legends.]

Gonzalez, who starred in “Hamilton” from 2016 to 2022, recalls going into the cavernous Richard Rodgers Theatre to collect her belongings shortly after Covid-19 shut down Broadway for 18 months [March 2020-June 2021]. “The ghost light was the only light on,” she says. “Even though we were in a pandemic, I was proud the tradition stayed — one day we were going to reopen, and we needed good vibes.”

Other Curses and Hauntings

“I don’t even mind a poltergeist,” says LuPone, who believes she was haunted by Eva Perón’s [1919-52] ghost throughout multiple runs of “Evita.” In the world of pretend, she adds, “everything that goes along with the theater — the magic, the superstitions — just enhances one’s performance.” But even for nonbelievers, there’s charm to be found in eerier traditions. Salonga, who doesn’t consider herself “one of those people that attracts supernatural beings,” would nonetheless offer a greeting while walking backstage at London’s Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, to whichever ghosts might be haunting it, including the so-called Man in Gray, a mysterious figure with a cloak, sword and tricorn hat who supposedly roams around there. [Salonga has been at the Drury Lane twice: she premièred Miss Saigon there in 1989-99, winning an Olivier Award for her performance, and she returned for Lea Salonga in Concert at Drury Lane on 26 June 2024.]

Wallace learned the hard way that even practical customs can turn metaphysical. When Michael Ball [b. 1962], her co-star [as Edna Turnblad] in the 2021 London Coliseum production of “Hairspray,” caught her whistling backstage, he warned of bad times to come. No sailors dropped any beams on her head, but most of the cast soon came down with Covid, forcing the musical to temporarily close. And Gonzalez admits that she’s not sure whether “Dance of the Vampires” bombed (it closed just over a month after opening) because of the material or because she didn’t touch the Legacy Robe during its ceremony.

Perhaps the industry’s best-known bylaw is that, unless acting in Shakespeare’s early 17th-century play, one should never say the word “Macbeth” inside a theater — otherwise you risk ruining the current production. The origins of this are predictably murky. The play traffics in things that might very well incur a hex — witches, hauntings, grisly murders — but one possible source could be the simple fact that, in an era when most theater companies operated in repertory (performing a rotating selection of popular works), “the Scottish play,” as the piece can be safely referred to, was a guaranteed moneymaker. If your season was failing, it might be time to stage “Macbeth.”

The way to lift the curse — which LuPone enforced during a 2008 revival of “Gypsy,” when its director and playwright, Arthur Laurents [1917-2011], accidentally uttered the word during previews, after which a cast member broke their pelvis — is for the perpetrator to exit the theater, turn three times, spit over their left shoulder, swear, then say a line from another of Shakespeare’s works or knock on the theater door to be allowed back in.

Shakespeare, in fact, invites a fair amount of shibboleths. As Longhurst says, “If your repertoire is classical or Greek plays, you begin to connect to the ancient rituals.” A few years ago, the director learned of a site-specific one at Shakespeare’s Globe in London: All shows there must end in a newly choreographed jig — or chance a calamity. Longhurst was skeptical when directing a production of John Ford’s 17th-century play “’Tis Pity She’s a Whore” in 2014 (“You finish and everyone is dead, and it’s like, ‘Well, now we get up and do a dance?’”) but appreciated the creative challenge and came to see it as a way to counteract the show’s grim finale.

That’s hardly the only jinx that verges on the comical. Rumor has it that Daniel Frohman [1851-1940], the early 20th-century producer-manager of Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre [1886-1909], would wave a white handkerchief from his office overlooking the stage whenever his overacting wife, Margaret Illington [1879-1934], needed to rein in her performance. Some actors, in flashes of ego death, still admit to seeing that hankie today.

[Juan A. Ramirez is a New York-based Venezuelan-American writer and critic focused on film, theater, and all forms of pop culture, as well as queer issues.  His writing has been featured in the New York Times, New York magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, them, INTO, HuffPost, DigBoston, Exeunt NYC, Theatrely, and the Huntington News.

[I didn’t cover the personal back-stage traditions of theater folk in my “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms.”  I had some practices of my own that I tried to keep up, however.  At the first theater at which I worked in New York City, I began bringing in brownies for my castmates.  I guess I did it about once a week during performances, and each batch was a little different.  The first tray were simply straight chocolate brownies, but when those went over well, I got adventurous.  I made mocha brownies by adding coffee to the batter, and chocolate-mint brownies.  I put peanut butter drops in one batch, and I even added a taste of brandy to one.  (And no, I never made pot or hash brownies.)

[I didn’t keep that up, though.  That theater was just a couple of blocks down from my apartment, so it was easy to bring the tray of brownies with me, but later I worked at theaters all over Manhattan—and a couple in New Jersey.  I retreated to an easier treat.  

[There were a couple of unusual toy stores in my neighborhood, and another shop that sold craft items from indigenous people from all over the world.  I looked for small gifts that either seemed evocative of my fellow actors and the director, or ones that seemed to match the characters they were playing—hopefully with a little humor.

[That got hard to keep up, so in the end, I finally just bought assorted mini-bottles of liquor.  One of the liquor stores near my apartment sold the little bottles like the ones served on airplanes.  That turned out not to be much fun, either to shop for or to give; there was no imagination in it.

[I also made it a practice for opening night to send the cast a telegram, following the old tradition of years ago.  I think the first ones I sent were actual Western Union telegrams, but then I learned of a service that just did opening night theater telegrams.  The messages came on special forms with colorful designs specifically reflecting show business, and the service, whose name I no longer remember—I’m sure it’s no longer operating anyway—guaranteed delivery just before curtain.]

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.]

'Playbill': A History of "The National Theatre Magazine"

[When I caught WABC’s 22 October 2023 broadcast of Broadway Backstage Fall Preview, I was delighted to see the brief feature on the printing of Playbill, which happens in a plant in Woodside, Queens.  It gave me the idea of composing a short history of the program magazine for Rick On Theater, the result of which you see below. 

[The reporter on the segment, Charlie Williams, called Playbill “the quintessential magazine of theater and Broadway.”  That’s a little hyperbolic, I suppose, but it’s not wrong.  Danny DeVito, one of several actors in the broadcast introducing plays they’re in this season on Broadway—he was in I Need That, which ran 2 November-30 December 2023 at the American Airlines Theatre—said when asked about the first time he saw his name in a Playbill, “Playbill was always . . . that thing you saved.”

[Actor Michael Urie, who was in the revival of Spamalot at the St. James Theatre that opened on 16 November 2023 (Urie left the cast on 21 January 2024), the co-host of the show with Eyewitness News reporter Michelle Charlesworth, remarked, “This is one of the theater world’s most prized souvenirs.”

[Because of sentiments like those, I’m posting the history of Playbill on ROT.  I hope you enjoy the read.]

If you’ve ever been to a Broadway show, you were handed a Playbill as you took your seat.  Since 1884, the independently edited and printed Playbill’s been the program magazine for Broadway theater, and later Off-Broadway, New York City venues like the Metropolitan Opera House and other Lincoln Center venues, and Carnegie Hall, as well as major theaters in Boston; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; Chicago; Houston; Miami, and a number of other cities.  But how did this come to be?

First, let’s step back about a hundred years before what we in the United States know as a Playbill was printed.  First, ‘playbill’ is a generic noun that’s a synonym for ‘program’ (or, if you’re in the United Kingdom or many of its former colonies, ‘programme’—a French word the Brits borrowed, meaning pretty much the same as the American and British words). 

Programs were used in Europe for many kinds of entertainment events as early as the 18th century, such as musical performances, fêtes, athletic events, and so on.  For this post, I’ll stick mostly to theatrical presentations for my examination.

The earliest programs, also called handbills, were short, handwritten, one-page leaflets which merely listed the performers.  They were handed out to patrons as they entered one of the many theaters that began popping up in almost every town across England at the time.

When inexpensive printing became available, theaters started distributing these handbills widely around the marketplace and drinking establishments to entice potential audiences.  One-sheet playbills flooded the streets, spotlighting the names of top performers who drew large crowds.

These playbills told audiences what to expect of the offered performance, such as, perhaps, alterations to a well-known play—say a new ending to Romeo and Juliet in which the lovers survive to say good-bye to one another. 

In the 18th-century predecessor to music hall, the British take on vaudeville, theater managers offered a mixed bill of entertainments.  The program would list the evening’s bill, say a dramatic play followed by lighter fare such as a tightrope walker, a strongman, or slapstick pantomime, and the order in which they’d be presented.

Across the sea in the U.S., a change was brewing as the 19th century began.  The programs were made into little pamphlets with several pages so that advertisements could be sold.  Not only did the ads pay for the programs themselves, but they brought in a little extra income to the theater. 

This development proved very popular all around.  First, of course, the theater benefitted from the additional revenue—theater is a financially precarious enterprise even at the best of times—and the patrons got more interesting tidbits on the show beside the names of the actors, the writer(s), and the creative staff: the director could put in a statement and so could a living dramatist.  Drawings, and later photographs, could be included.

Theater is arguably the most ephemeral of arts.  Once the performance is over, there’s nothing left but the memory.  This new, expanded program was a free souvenir of the event—to be taken home and consumed at leisure and even retained as a keepsake or a memory aid.

(I have hundreds filed away, going back to 1974—and a few from even earlier than that.  I’m not a theatrical packrat; they’re for reference.  I use them all the time as a source of information on plays I saw decades ago when something I’m writing, mostly for Rick On Theater, comes up.  I only wish I’d started keeping my programs long ago when I was seeing some of today’s Golden Oldies!  I wrote about that time in “A Broadway Baby,” posted on ROT, 22 September 2010.)

The program booklets before the advent of the New York Theatre Program Corporation, which eventually became Playbill—I’m coming to that—were paid for by the theater or, in the case of a touring show, the producing company.  Small theaters, music halls, and provincial or country playhouses where there were touring companies or variety acts continued to use the single-sheet handbills.

Incidentally, there was another phenomenon that developed at this juncture.  Patrons in Britain pay for programs—it’s up to £2.50 in London ($3.15) and as much as €5 in Dublin ($5.40)—whereas, in the U.S., we still get them gratis.

From the early 1880s to the beginning of the World War I (1914 in Europe), the larger theaters in London’s West End saw the commercial possibilities in the elaborate theater programs.  The theater managers produced expensive programs full of illustrations and photos of the major actors and scenes from the play to sell to the patrons as souvenirs.

In 1916, the British government instituted an entertainment tax on theater tickets.  The sale of theater programs not only produced income for the impresarios’ pockets, but covered the tax cost as well, so the theater managers didn’t have to raise ticket prices.  The U.S. theater industry never had this burden.

Back in the States, even the advertisers were happy with the new development: it was a way to make direct and virtually one-on-one contact with potential customers.  Mass-circulation newspapers were unknown in the mid- and late 19th century, and theater at the time was the only truly popular entertainment—sort of the TV of its day.  The theater program was one of the few types of printed matter that was widely—and freely—distributed.

The enterprise was a huge success.  Paid advertising, principally for local business, in theater programs underwent a quick and speedy surge and forever changed the theater program.  It also eventually led to the establishment of the company that became Playbill.

An enterprising young man who had arrived in New York City from Ohio as a teenager without money, prospects, or contacts saw that this development was a real business opportunity.  In 1884, Frank Vance Strauss (1863-1939), who later changed his last name to Storrs during World War I because Strauss was German, approached the managers and owners of the larger New York playhouses and offered them a magazine-style theater program at no cost.  Strauss made his money from the program from the advertisers. 

Though the name didn’t appear for decades, this was the beginning of Playbill.

Every theater that signed up for the magazine got pages with the cast list and brief information about the performance—such as setting and time of the action, act and scene breakdowns, and musical numbers—plus a cover in color.  The rest of the program booklet was the same for every theater with short articles on the New York theater scene, stage personalities, and other features—plus the ads.  

The program magazine didn’t have its own title at this point; the cover bore the name of the theater at the top.  In 1911, Strauss named his company the Strauss Magazine Theatre Program and in 1920, his company took the name New York Theatre Program Corporation.  In 1934, the magazine became The Playbill and then simply Playbill in 1957. 

The title font varied from issue to issue until it was standardized in ’57, and the current, distinct typeface appeared in about 1974, with the familiar yellow background having become standard the previous year.    Yellow was selected for the background to the logo because it was the cheapest color available.

Since 2000, variations occur to mark special occasions, such as a green banner replacing the yellow one in October 2008 for the fifth anniversary of Wicked (and again in 2018 for the 10th), or the rainbow banner in June for LGBTQ Pride Month, which debuted in 2014.

The contents of the original magazine changed weekly, which was also how often new plays commonly opened at each theater back then.  (The content of today’s Playbills, aside from the production details, changes monthly.)

When Playbill launched a subscription edition in 1982, the contents of the magazine delivered to subscribers’ homes was identical to the copies distributed at the theaters as far as the features and articles were concerned, but the production information was replaced with listings of Broadway and Off-Broadway shows and news from touring shows and the theater scene around the country and abroad.

Over the years, there have been various different regular features and columns in the magazine, such as “At This Theatre,” a column with historical information on the theater housing the production, “Ask Playbill,” which answers questions about theater from readers and playgoers, and a “Theatre Quiz.”

Most major New York theaters used Strauss’s program, but not all.  The Shubert Company (predecessor to the present-day Shubert Organization), the enterprise of the formidable “Shubert Brothers”—as Lee (1871-1953), Samuel S. (1878-1905), and Jacob J. Shubert (1879?-1963) were universally known collectively—for instance, insisted for many years on publishing its own programs.

In 1891, Strauss merged his company with his main competitor and, by 1905, had standardized the appearance of the program so that the layout, including the advertising space, was uniform.

After World War I ended in 1918, Strauss sold his company to his nephew, Richard M. Huber (ca. 1881-1965).  Strauss had made a great fortune from his enterprise, becoming a true entrepreneur and a leading member of New York City’s social elite.  

His New York Times obituary (as Frank V. Storrs, 9 March 1939) described him as “prominent in the field of theatrical advertising and active for many years in banking and at one time was the owner of a theatre chain.”  The Times added that “he had many financial interests outside the theatrical and advertising fields” and “also owned property in the midtown theatrical section of Manhattan.”

From 1918 onward, the company started printing playbills for all of Broadway and by 1924, Huber’s New York Theatre Program Corporation was printing 16,000,000 programs for over 60 theaters.  Thus began Playbill’s virtual monopoly on supplying theater program printing for New York City’s commercial theaters.

Although Frank Vance Strauss may have conceived the notion of the playbill magazine, Richard Huber gets the credit for starting the New York Theater Program Corporation.  The seeds of today’s Playbill were planted under Huber’s ownership.  The eventual iconic look and content of the magazine began to take shape under Huber. 

Under Huber’s leadership, the magazine gained the name The Playbill and short articles on fashion, automobiles, books, as well as interviews and even jokes were added to the program’s offerings.  The cover art was also standardized in the 1920s, featuring images representing the theater, which stayed the same from show to show.

Early in the 1930s, the artwork on the Playbill covers began to be show-specific, though the title of the production didn’t appear anywhere on the cover.  That first started to happen later in the decade.  By the mid-1940s, the show’s title began to appear above a production photo and the Playbill logo.

The artwork on the Playbill covers were black-and-white production photos until the late 1960s, when individualized cover art appeared, often drawings or graphic art—though they, too, were black and white.  Aside from the colored banner framing the Playbill logo, color wasn’t used for the cover art until after the turn of the 21st century.

In 1956, after 70 years as a Strauss family enterprise, Huber sold the magazine publisher to producer and real estate magnate Roger L. Stevens (1910-98), who in 1961 became the founding chairman (until 1988) of what became the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and then in 1965, the first chairman (through 1969) of what became the National Endowment for the Arts.  

Stevens changed the magazine’s name to just Playbill the year after he bought the company and no longer let a representation of the productions serve as the dominate image on the cover.  Instead, the cover design was nonspecific with the theater’s name and the play’s title inside the program.  The cover design for each theater didn’t change.

Protests from theatergoers caused Stevens to change his decision and Playbill’s colorful band across the top of the cover contained the show's information printed beneath the Playbill logo.  Eventually, the colored strip was standardized into the yellow band of today’s Playbill.

Gilman Kraft (1926-99), a publisher, bought the company in 1960 and hired Arthur T. Birsh (1933?-2021), a master printer, as the manager of the magazine’s printing plant; Kraft then sold it to the conglomerate Metromedia in 1968.  

Birsh worked his way up to president of the company under Kraft, but when Metromedia acquired Playbill, the media conglomerate liked the way Birsh handled the company’s business and kept him on as second-in-command at the corporate level.

When Metromedia and Playbill parted ways in 1973, Birsh left the media conglomerate and became Playbill’s sole owner.  Playbill’s current chief operations officer and vice president since 2016 is Alex Birsh (b. 1989), the third generation of his family to operate the program publisher; he’s the grandson of Arthur Birsh.  (Alex Birsh’s father, Phil Birsh, [b. 1958] is the current CEO and president, having succeeded his father in 1993.)

On the Eyewitness News broadcast on WABC on 22 October 2023, Playbill COO/V.P. Alex Birsh declared, "We truly are quite simply the brand of Broadway."  That’s arguably so in a certain sense, but there have been competitors and niche alternatives to Playbill.

Playbill almost exclusively concentrated on Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters, while Stagebill, founded in 1927, focused on concerts, opera, and dance.  By the late 1990s, Playbill was highly profitable while Stagebill wasn’t, so, to increase revenue, Stagebill entered Playbill’s territory.  The Public Theater and Disney contracted with Stagebill for their shows.  

Disney’s issue was control of advertising content.  Playbill relies on advertising revenue that’s entirely under its authority, but Disney’s policy prohibits the promotion of liquor and tobacco products on its property.  (Disney owns the New Amsterdam Theatre, where its Lion King was playing.)

In response, Playbill produced Showbill, a sister publication started around 1999 that conformed to Disney’s advertising restrictions.  With an alternative available, Disney switched from Stagebill to Showbill for The Lion King (1997-present).  Similar situations occurred at other Broadway theaters and productions.

Playbill also responded to Stagebill’s challenge by producing publications for classic arts houses, particularly venues that were once Stagebill clients, such as Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, and the New York Philharmonic. 

For these venues, Playbill broke from its typical format and began publishing completely customized programs like Stagebill.  Because of this action and Stagebill’s continuing financial problems, it foundered and Playbill bought up the Stagebill trademark in 2002.  Thus ended the competition for Playbill’s hegemony.

In 1994, Playbill launched Playbill Online (https://playbill.com/) and has increased its digital offerings steadily, along with entries into other media, as the new century unfolded.  My interest here has been on the ink-and-paper publication, so I won’t detail this development.  Wikipedia has a run-down of Playbill’s expansion beyond hard-copy outlets, and I suggest interested ROTters check that out at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playbill#Other_media.

[Many people, including me, speak of Playbill as the concrete reminder of the evanescent theater experience once the curtain drops and the playgoer leaves the playhouse.  I admitted above that I have been keeping my programs, including those that aren’t Playbills, for the past 50 years, and that I wish that I’d kept them from earlier times.

[The fact is that I did keep my theater programs from my childhood playgoing—I just didn’t keep them permanently.  I brought them home, read them, looked at the pictures, and then sometimes used them for something.  Here’s a case in point:

[The first Broadway show I saw on Broadway (as opposed to pre-Broadway in Washington, D.C., or on the National Tour) was Fiorello!; the second one I saw was My Fair Lady.  That would make it 1959, ’60, or ’61—7th or 8th grade.

[In those years, my Washington middle school had a music class as a regular part of the curriculum and all the students kept a folder for our music sheets.  It was an ordinary manilla folder, and we were supposed to decorate it, presumably with something related to music.  

[The year I saw MFL, I cut up the Playbill and used the still photos from the show to decorate my music folder!  The Playbill’s cover photo, which was Liza (Julie Andrews, of course) sitting on the steps of Covent Garden, holding a bunch of flowers ("Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?"), was the center pic of my folder’s cover, with the other shots from the Playbill scattered around “randomly.”  I can still visualize it!  

[Now, here’s something I’d never put together before 2021: the chronology of this seminal experience:

[Since I would have made my folder at the start of the school year, and Fiorello! opened at the end of November 1959—early in my 7th-grade year—I probably saw it that Christmas vacation.  (I’d have turned 13 during that holiday.)  We must have gone back to New York City sometime later that school year, maybe spring break. (Both sets of my grandparents lived in NYC.)

[I suspect my family saw MFL then, since if we’d waited until Christmas of 8th grade, I would have used something else to make my music folder; I must have already had the Playbill when school started for 8th grade.  So I must have seen MFL whenever spring break was in 1960 and held onto the Playbill.

[That also means I saw Andrews in TV’s Cinderella before I saw her on stage.  I already knew who she was because of all the hype about her appearance in MFL (which had opened on 15 March 1956), but Cinderella was on TV in March 1957 (see “Cinderella: Impossible Things Are Happening (CBS-TV, 31 March 1957),” posted on ROT on 25 April 2013).]