ISSN 1896-9461 ISBN 978-83-233-2248-1
NEGRO UNITS OF THE FEDERAL Kin ga witek THEATRE PROJECT
- A MILESTONE IN THE HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN THEATRE
What is inuch more to the pointis the shocking degrees to which Negroes in the past were not pennitted to be a visible part of the national culture. The New Deal began the process of change.
W. Leuchtenburg
INTRODUCTION
Negro Units of the Federal Theatre Project were part of a grand undertaking of the American government, introduced during the difficult times of Great Depression. In 1935, over eight million Americansdid not have jobs; to reduce this extreme unem
ployment, the government of F.D. Roosevelt introduced an Emergency ReliefAppro
priation Act. In May 1935, Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created and equipped generously with 5 billion dollars. Money was used to introduce the pro gram ofpublic works and to fund aid for artists. For the first time in American his
tory, government acted as an art patron. It was a significant novelty. In case of only four programs executed by WPA and described as FederalProjectNumberOne, over 40,000 artists found employment.1
1 K. Michałek, Amerykańskie Stulecie. Historia Stanów Zjednoczonych Ameryki 1900- -2001, Warszawa 2004, s. 172.
2 J. Dassin, http: //www.wisc. edu/wisconsinpress/books/242.htm
Federal TheatreProject(part of the Federal Project Number One) was the biggest and the most ambitious of the state ventures, made to organize and producetheater events. It was created not only to give jobs for unemployed, but also to keep up American optimism by giving people a chance to celebrate national art. As Jules Dassin put it: “The Federal Theatre was a part of a movement in America to put people to work. Among the unemployed people, as well as mechanics and metal workers, were actors and artists. And this wonderful idea to put them to work in the cultural field was such a big moment for America - for education (... ) for culture - that we still mourn the loss.”2
92 KINGAWITEK
Hallie Flanagan, a playwright and manager, was sworn in as a national director of the Project in August 1935. Her aim was to create places of work for actors but also to provide national services for Americans. She believed that theatre was more than a private enterprise, that most ofall, it wasfor public good, which when sup ported and developed properly could become an important social and educational force. It was a beginning of the new type of theatre in America - theatre concerned with bitter reality, where plays were often laced with social commentary.
FTP consisted of and sponsored different so-called units. Among them were e. g.
Italian, Spanish, French and African-American (Negro) units. All artists, and Black especially, for the first time got new possibilities and opportunities of work. Thanks to the Project over 12, 700 people working for theatre found employment (actors made up nearly 50% of them), each month nearly 1, 000 shows were presented.
Tickets for the performances were extremely cheap and actually over 78% of all peoplewatched them for free and a lot of them were exposed to live theater for the first time. Generally, FTP produced over 1, 200 plays and about 100 new playwrights started their careers.1
1 http: //www.wwcd.0rg/p0licy/US/newdeal.html#WPA
1 H. Hopkins, http: //www.neh.gOv/news/humanities/2003-07/federaltheatre. html 5 http: //www.wwcd.0rg/p0licy/US/newdeal.html#WPA
0 R. Fraden, Blueprints For A Black Federal Theatre 1935-1939, Cambridge University Press, New York, Cambridge 1996, p. 199.
Announcing the beginnings of FTP and its aims, during the National Theatrical Conference in 1935, HarryHopkinsanswered the questionwhether such theatre could be free from censorship saying: “I am asked whether a theater subsidized by the gov ernmentcan be keptfreeofcensorship, and I say, yes, it is going tobe kept free from censorship. What we want is a free, adult, uncensored theater.’’*4 Despite this assur ance, six months later first problems with government censorship started. Slowly, Washington began to criticize Project, accusing it of procommunist tendencies and activities. In 1938, the budget ofFTP was reduced about 20% and later in June 1939 Congress completely stopped funds which led to Project being shut all over the coun try. Official reasons were said to be economical. Nevertheless, H. Flanagan, who was questioned by the Special Committee on Un-American Propaganda Activities, stated that actually, the reasons were purely political, as the governmentbegan to be afraid of the potential message that might have been propagated thanks to art. Moreover, Federal Theatre was treated not as a cultural matter but as political issue. Accusations of procommunist tendencies led to the examinations of the FTP staff.5 After the ex aminations, FTP productions were describedas communist propaganda.
Historian Rena Fraden adds that one more thing contributed to the closing of the project - Negro Units: “The idea of autonomous Negro units, leading to a national Negro theatre or fully integrated American theatre, including whites and blacks equally, threatened status quo. ” The protests of theatre workers in the country were of no help. Afterall, it wasnot onlyabout supposed communist infiltration, but also about general idea believed in Congress that an average American could see no point in spending their taxes on supporting artists or encouraging the arts. It turned out that the federal funding for the arts was controversial, although the budget for the Projectamounted to less than 1% of the WPA’s total allocation. 6
Maybe it was unavoidable. Maybe the Project sponsored by the government couldn’t be completely free from censorship and artists who believed in these ideals had just been a bit naive. But although it didn’t last long, the Project certainly im proved life and the chancesof careers for Black artists.
NEGRO UNITS
Negro Units of the Federal Theatre Project were part of Hallie Flanagan’s hope for creating an exceptional American theatre; they were also used to awake cultural awareness among Whites and Blacks alike, and at the same time contributed to re
vising old stereotypes present on American stages for so long.
These units were created as a result of the Rose McClendon’s suggestion. All she wanted to achieve wasto ensure the production of plays dealing with the subjectof Black people’s lives and help the careers of talented Black artists. Her proposal was enthusiastically accepted and strongly supported by H. Flanagan andJ. Houseman.
ByOctober 1936 seventeen units were established: three in the South, Birmingham, Durham, and Okmulgee, Oklahoma, the latter two teaching units; three units in the Midwest, a drama unit and an “all-colored” minstrel unit in Chicago, and a musical revue unit in Peoria; in New York City, drama, choral, youth, operetta, and mario nette units; units inBoston, New Jersey, and Connecticut; and on the West Coast, in Oakland, Los Angeles, and Seattle. By January 1939, there were ten units: the Hart
ford unit with about 25 blacks were still putting on plays and making occasional tours around Connecticut; 40 people were still employed on the Boston Negro unit;
inaddition, Newark, Philadelphia, Raleigh, North Carolina, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Chicago, and SanFrancisco were still in operation. There were four projects in New York City alone: a unit at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, the Negro youth unit, Africandance unit, and a vaudeville unit.7
7 Ibidem, p.4.
FTP gave African American theatre professionals and amateurs absolutely new opportunities. Some for the first time gained technical training and joined theatre craft unions; writers could write plays that departed from minstrel stereotypes; and directors chose Shakespeare and Shaw for Negro units, allowing actors a chance to play parts very different from before. The FTP also helped foster an ongoing black theatre. Certainly a different set ofpeople who had never been able to afford it or who did not live near the centers of culture were granted access to listen and look and sometimes even create because of the institutions of the New DealArts Projects.
All this time two questions were present in philosophical debates: what the Blacks should be writing about? and who should write for them? Some claimed that authentic black art needed and even demanded the existence of separate institu tions. According to the others, African-American art should be a part of the main stream whiteinstitutions.This debate is still opentoday.
There were five types of plays that were developed and performed by the Negro units:
• Commercial plays - showed in popular theatres for the general public (“Swing Mikado,” “Voodoo Macbeth”).
94 KINGAWITEK
• Folk plays - concerning life and customs of simple people (“All God’sChillunGot Wings”).
• Historicplays - basedon the stories from the lives of famous people (“Go Down Moses” -aboutHarriet Tubman).
• Social plays - concerning social problems in dramatic circumstances (“Big White Fog”).
• LivingNewspapers- a new dramatic form - a committed documentary that in formed the audience of the size, nature, and origin of a social problem, and then called forspecific action to solve it.8
8http://novaonline.nv.ce.va.us/eli/spd 130et/federaltheatre.htin
9R. Ingrain [in:] The Theater of BlackAmerican.Volume I, E.Hill (ed.), Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NewJersey 1980, p. 45.
10 R. Fraden, op.cit., p. 98.
By its practices FTP became the pioneer in promoting the ethnic variety. Al though it was not ableto erase completely the color issue, it showed less race dis
crimination than any other of Roosevelt’s projects. FTP was openly campaigning against minority discrimination and its national director was calling for creation of theatre free from racial prejudices. The Project’s interest in ensuring the racial justice distinguished it from all previously undertaken theatrical enterprises. The clerks taking part in it, right from the beginning initiated the close contacts with ethnic minorities, which resulted inamazingly good level of communication.
Probably, the most striking way in which it contributed to development of Negro drama was: „an honest attempt to develop black playwrights who could express life in their own vernacular.’’9 Because of subsidies from the government playwrights could spend their entire time on learning and practicing their art. For the first time, Negro playwrights were given chance ofjoining a mainstream of American theatre.
Moreover, it was the Negro unit productions that dominated the news to the extent that many contemporary critics see them as the one of the best enterprises of the whole theatre project. Blacks took full advantage of the opportunity to come into existence in the professional theatre and provedthat drama, directing and actingare within their competence.
New York Harlem Unit was the biggest and the most productive of all Negro units. In order to meet a variety of audience expectations it was divided into two groups: one was responsible for adaptations of classic plays and a second for plays by and about Blacks. The most famous productions of the latter section were:
“Brother Mose," “Walk Together Chillun” and “Conjur’ Man Dies.” Young Orson Welles headed a classic unit. When he discovered that Asadata Dafora Horton, a native of Sierra Leone, had brought his dancers to the USA, Welles placed them in
“Macbeth,” transmuting Shakespeare’s witches into Haitian mambo. Thus, “Voodoo Macbeth” was born - very extraordinary play. 137 artists took part in this perform
ance and after the first night the audience was applauding for over 15 minutes. It was a greatsuccess.10
Another two big units were: Chicago Uunit with its very controversial play “Big White Fog” and “The Swing Mikado" which becamea real artistic triumph; and Seat tle Unit with the most experimental performances like “Little Black Sambo" or
“Natural Man” and the prominent propaganda play“Stevedore.”
None of the others units matched New York, Chicago, and Seattle in number or quality of production. Los Angeles mounted only seven shows but one was a real triumph - “Run, Little Chillun.” The Newark Unit had its well-known “The Trial of Doctor Beck” in which using the device of a murder mystery, the playwright, con
structed a courtroom suspense drama in such a way that both white and black audi ences agreed that color in America had the power to influence justice. Professor Tina Redd has documented a verydetailed history of Birmingham, Alabama’s Negro unit, which performed underextreme racist restrictionsbut in spiteofall obstacles it managed to produce five plays.11
" E.G. Hill, J.V.Hatch, A History of African American Theatre, Cambridge University Press, New York, Cambridge2003, p. 331.
In four short years dozens of productions proved how deep and vast was the wellof black talent waitingforan opportunity. The HP proved that once the federal government established a national theatre, how fast and how far such a project could move toward promoting an end to discrimination in the arts. Black play wrights entered the arena ofsocial criticism with a force and an authenticity never felt before on the American stage. At the beginning HP’s objective was “to attain new aesthetic heights hitherto unexplored by the Negros in the theatre, and thus to lay the cornerstone for the Negro Theatre of the future.” The FTP’s idealism contin
ued toflow into the black theatres of the nextgenerations.
REFERENCES
Dassin, J.,http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/books/242.htm
Fraden, R., Blueprints For A Black Federal Theatre 1935-1939, Cambridge University Press, NewYork, Cambridge 1996.
Hill, EG., Hatch, J.V., A History ofAfrican American Theatre, Cambridge University Press, New York, Cambridge 2003.
Hopkins, H., http://www.neh.gOv/news/humanities/2003-07/federaltheatre.html
Michałek, K., Amerykańskie Stulecie. Historia Stanów Zjednoczonych Ameryki 1900-2001, Warszawa 2004.
The Theater ofBlack American. VolumeI, Hill, E. (ed), Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NewJersey 1980.
http://www.wwcd.0rg/p0licy/US/newdeal.html#WPA http://novaonline.nv.ce.va.us/eli/spd 130et/federaltheatre.htm
