Advantages And Disadvantages Of The Federal Theater Project

In 1811, the New York city planners began a massive building execution. In 1835, Mayor Cornelius Van Wyck invited people to Manhattan to “move up there and enjoy the clean air!” In the early nineteenth century, the Theatre District between 41st street and 53rd street, was mainly just farmland and land owned by families all over. Broadway holds over 40 theatres at the moment, but it really wasn’t until the 1920’s-1930’s that theatres’ started to be built down these streets. In the 1930s, Broadway experienced a major crisis mainly caused upon the invention of the films having sound.

The decade of the 1930’s can be characterized in two parts: The Great Depression, and the restoration of the American economy. America had been completely destroyed due to the Stock Market Crash of 1929. It was up to the government and people of the 1930’s to "mend" America’s wounds. One man stood up to this challenge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He promised to fix the American economy, provide jobs, and help the needy. During The Great Depression, the crime rate had risen to an all new high. J. Edgar Hoover helped to create the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As America was restored, culture grew quickly. Dance clubs, new music styles, glamour girls, movies and sports were all popular forms of entertainment in the

The technological advances of the 19th century played a big role in theatre. Since America was having an Industrial Revolution, many people from the country moved to the expanding cities in the east (“Nineteenth Century Theatre”). This migration made the growth of theatres possible. Theatre seats, balconies, and the basic structural support were made of wood (“Nineteenth Century Theatre”). During the 19th century, theatre lights were “upgraded” three times, the theatre went from candle lighting, to gas lighting,

named after their cost and the Greek word for theater, soon spread across the country. These storefront theaters remained the prime outlet for movies among the lower and middle class. The upper class began to flock to more modern theaters called Picture Palaces. Picture Palaces reached their peaks in the 1920’s and died out when the Great Depression hit in the 1930’s. These theaters were much larger than most theaters today and offered a wide range of features such as, extravagant lobbies, neatly dressed ushers, and live music. During

These clubs and theaters were a big hit during the twenties and were a great landmark of the changes in society during these times. They were home to great stars and the theaters started the idea of hollywood and movies.

At the peak of the Great Depression in 1932 over 12,060,000 citizens were unemployed and the rate of deflation exceeded 10% (John C. Williams1). Millions of individuals were starving on the streets and billions were lost on the stock market (History.com2). When Franklin Roosevelt released the New Deal in 1933, a plan to provide relief, reform, and recovery to the distressed country, Americans were in dire need of relief. President FDR acted quickly and implemented a series of programs aimed towards providing an immediate stop to the economic free fall and providing relief to his people (DPLA3). In his effort to reduce the severity of poverty and unemployment, FDR released programs to aid business and labor, farmers, housing and homeowners,

The “Big Four” policy agendas of President Johnson’s Great Society initiatives tend to garner the most attention: federal aid to elementary and secondary education, Medicare and Medicaid, Immigration Reform, and Civil Rights Act. An often-overlooked policy agenda is the creation of what is now the National Endowment for the Arts (“NEA”). The NEA is often compared to two Works Progress Association (“WPA”) programs, the Federal Arts Project and the Federal Writers Project. Both were intended to create jobs as part of a larger economic stimulus package (Bauerlin and Grantham, p. 1). Although parallels are

Throughout the late 1920's an important theatrical movement developed: The Workers' Theatre Movement. In the end, it diminished around the middle of the 1930's, and one of the developments aiding the decline of the Workers' Theatre Movement, was the creation of the Federal Theatre Project. The Federal Theatre Project was the largest and most motivated effort mounted by the Federal Government to organize and produce theater events. Once the government took on the duty of putting people to work, it was able to consider the movement. The Federal Theatre Project’s purpose was “to provide relief work for theatrical artists that utilized their talents and to

The New Deal help created jobs and money to a lot of people in the 1930s. The New Deal created jobs by “creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to provide jobs for unemployed people” (history.com/topics/new-deal). This administration gave jobs to millions

After the golden years known as, The Roaring Twenties,the U.S experienced the greatest economic crisis in human history known as the Great Depression.People struggled just to get by,actors especially .The Federal Theater Project (FTP), was a government funded program to help struggling performers find work.Though the idea of such a program was revolutionary,it failed, and ended a few years after its creation. The FTP ultimately didn’t establish what it set out to do.

It was the year of 1934. America was fighting to come out from the worst economic crisis that the world would ever witness. It was also the year of high crime rate, low Gross Domestic Product and the lowest unemployment rate America had experienced. The Depression had paralyzed American labor forces, but there was a hope still alive in every American including J.D. Rockefeller when he said, “These are days when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of my life, depressions have come and gone. Prosperity has always returned and will again” (Rockefeller). At that time, the next president named Franklin D. Roosevelt, famous as FDR, brought Americans back to work through his confident efforts and new series of programs called ‘the New Deal’.

During the Great Depression entertainment such as movies, music/radio, and dancing provided people with and escape from the harsh realities of what was going on around them. As for movies, while (SUB) people in the 1930s were struggling because of their loss of jobs. Hollywood had entered what was called the golden age (“Popular” 2), the Hollywood golden age lasted from 1930-1950, and consisted of people and new movies flourishing due to people's lack of work and extra free time, popular examples of movies include: Snow White and the Seven dwarfs, The Wizard of Oz , King Kong, Frankenstein , and Dracula. New people, specifically child star Shirley Temple (“The 1930s” 1) played a key role by influencing the younger population. Even though movies were popular, they had to appeal to a mass audience in order to stay running (“The 1930s” 1), in that sense cartoons and family friendly movies we're most popular. The air conditioned theaters also provided people with a luxury outside of their homes for a couple hours, after all seeing a movie only cost a person $0.27 (“Popular” 1) opposed to the average price today of $8.61. Even though

For decades people found theatre one of the most enjoyable form of entertainment all across the world. With every play comes a cost. A value which somebody's story is told. Obviously it can be comic drama or despairing,. Each second of these plays are genuinely delightful and exceptional. Where the performing artists show a totally distinctive side of characters to the group of onlookers where they demonstrate to them something new and pleasurable. And behind the theatre and its plays is one person who keeps it all in check and that is the director. The director is like the heart of a person. You don’t see the heart but you know if it’s doing its job correctly

1920’s Broadway was booming! Due to the changes in song formatting, the modernization of plot line, and with a variety of dance style, The Jazz Age catapulted Broadway to a higher dimension than ever before. Like most hits, the Jazz Age fizzled out due to unforeseen circumstances. The Jazz Age ended with the 1929 stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression. The country suffered, investments dropped, banks failed, and crashing companies caused massive unemployment rates. Along with the rest of the country, Broadway was negatively impacted by The Great Depression. However, despite the loss of jobs and struggling venues, the decade of the thirties proved to be an enlightening and rich experience for Broadway. Through research, we will open the curtain with the negative effects that The Great Depression had on Broadway during the 1930’s, then venture into the rising action where we will be begin to see the turning point, and finally end the show in the final act with the light at the end of the tunnel.

In 1927 new technology emerged in sound, people started going back to the theatres to watch films,