Synopses & Reviews
During the 1930s the Work Progress Administration funded the Federal Theater Project to sustain unemployed theatrical workers in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other major urban centers, employing over 12,000 people and presenting countless productions. Some of the most popular and memorable of these works, such as the "voodoo" Macbeth and the "swing" Mikado, were produced in the so-called Negro Units, whose story is narrated in this book. Particular focus is given to problems of representation in a community and in an era trying to define what was African American, what was Negro, what was American, what was peculiar, and what was universal in the arts.
Review
"Fraden's active yet balanced voice makes the work approachable for the casual reader yet her meticulous exploration of cultural and political frictions inside and beyond the project represents a significant contribution to the study of Negro FT making it required reading for any serious scholar of not only the Federal Theatre Project but of the American theatre scene of the 1930's." Theatre Studies, Vol. 41"This major work is complex and scholarly. A critical and historical analysis of the purpose, plays, audiences and actors of the Federal Theatre of 1935-39, Blueprints for a Black Federal Theatre is compelling....useful to theatre students (and others) because of the rich and copious notes." Glenda E. Gill, Theatre Survey"Rena Fraden's 'Blueprint for a Black Federal Theatre' will also be a useful textbook for teaching African American theatre history. Fraden has distinguished her work from that of her major forerunners....'Blueprint' substantially enhance[s] our understanding of African American theatre and will enliven classroom discussions with the cogent and timely arguments [it] present[s]." Joni jones, Drama Review
Synopsis
The Negro units of the Federal Theatre Project were one of the highly controversial, cutting-edge expressions of New Deal philosophy at work within the Works Progress Administration's Arts Projects. This experiment in government-supported culture during the late 1930s brought to the forefront one of the central problems in American democratic culture - the representation of racial difference. As WPA, the FTP and writers like Richard Wright and Theodore Ward attempted to make art more relevant and more accessible to more people, they often came up against a conflict between their high-minded sense of what art could accomplish and the demands of their audience for popular entertainment. At a time when the tradition of black entertainment had come to seem suspect to many of the black intelligentsia and black artists, the provocative question of how political or entertaining black theatre should be was rendered especially problematic. Those working in the profession quickly discovered the inescapable ideological responsibilities that come of opening a curtain on any sort of show, whether apparently entertaining or political in nature. Blueprints for a Black Federal Theatre goes on to explore the historical context of its subject, taking up the liberal idealism of the thirties and the critical debates in black journals over the role of a national theatre for African Americans. Surveying the difficulties of writing new plays that broke with old stereotypes, the conflicting demands audiences made for different kinds of dramas, and the role of the "essentially dramatic" black actor, the book offers broad and timely reflections on issues of cultural separatism and multiculturalism that continueto engage the arts today.
Synopsis
Blueprints for a Black Federal Theatre, 1935-1939 focuses on the struggles of various groups of black and white critics, audiences, and artists to define what constituted authentic, properly representative African American art in the theatre of the 1930s.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-238) and index.
Table of Contents
Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. A new deal (or not) for culture; 2. Critical directions: towards a national negro theatre; 3. Producing new dramas: the politics of choice; 4. The unpredictable audience; 5. Acting properly; Afterword; Notes.