Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times

By 1931 the Hoover administration found itself in a tenuous and somewhat contradictory position. While supporting some major federal and state infrastructure projects, the administration balked at the creation of programs aimed at providing direct government support to a populace stretched to the point of starvation. The poor now ranged from illiterate, disenfranchised African Americans living under the crushing effects of Jim Crow in the South to intellectual elites, including writers, authors, actors, and directors out of work throughout the entire country. The problem of the Great Depression was both vast and wide ranging.

The title of Susan Quinn’s book Furious Improvisation refers to the notion that the response to such a crushing economic downturn required a myriad of experimental reforms. One of the more controversial programs introduced by Harry Hopkins, director of the WPA, was Federal One — a program to put writers, visual artists, musicians, and theater workers back to work through a series of initiatives. Hopkins once commented of artists, “Hell. They’ve got to eat just like other people.” He chose an accomplished theater director from Vassar College (and his friend from his own college days in Iowa) — Hallie Flanagan — to run the Federal Theatre Project.

Together, the Hopkins and Flanagan created a program aimed at two ends. The first was to simply put theater workers, actors, and writers back to work. The program had a second, equally important, aim in bringing live theater to a popular audience. Performances were affordable and became extremely popular. The program created Negro and Yiddish units, a product of segregated performance space and Flanagan’s progressive beliefs, which stands as an example of New Deal policies influenced by the social gospel espoused by late-nineteenth century thinkers.

The budget for the Federal Theatre Project (early on the program adopted the British spelling of “Theatre”) was comparatively small. In fact, the theater component represented a mere one-tenth of one percent of the overall WPA budget. Despite this, Quinn’s saga traces the remarkable degree to which the project became a favorite whipping boy of both the press and political opponents of the New Deal. The project was regularly criticized as a “boondoggle” and conservatives ultimately charged the program  with encouraging free love, racial equality, and communism.

Even as plays were selling out in Iowa, New York, and San Francisco, the project succumbed to political attack. Despite its relatively short existence as a federal program, Quinn’s book reminds of a moment in time when performers were put back to work, much to the delight of audiences, many so desperately in need of distraction. The book also reminds us of the important legacy of the New Deal in temporarily nurturing young writers and artists — involved in the Federal Theatre Project were Orson Welles, Arthur Miller, and Richard Wright.

This book is recommended reading for anyone interested in Federal One or the Federal Theater Project. Quinn’s story is an informative as it is compelling.

Reviewed by Barbara Bernstein

 

is Project Manager for The Living New Deal. He is a trained cultural historian who teaches courses in U.S. History at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University.

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