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Works Progress Administration Vs WPA

Decent Essays

The Great Depression in the 1930s was a devastating blow to the American economy and peoples. In fact, it left 15 million people, more than twenty percent of the population, unemployed and without a source of income. Jobs were few and far between for everyone, but some of those whom the unemployment hit hardest were those involved in theater and the arts. That was where the Federal Theater Project (FTP) was intended to come into the picture; however, it did not do so successfully. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the FTP were successful in having audiences and critics alike, pleased with their shows. Despite this, however, there was still a lot of backlash against the program and even the New Deal itself. A lot of conflict originated from the fact that the FTP was announced to be “free, adult, uncensored theater” but did not follow those guidelines. “I am asked whether a theater subsidized by the government can be kept free of censorship, and I say, yes, it is going to be kept free of censorship” (text 3 paragraph 4). Instead of being censorship free as Harry Hopkins pledged in the announcement of the FTP, it was plagued by the censorship of the government. …show more content…

However, it did not have that same success with smaller towns as it was originally intended to do, The author of A Brief Overview of the WPA Bienes Center for the Literary Arts stated,”Originally designed to offer “free, adult, uncensored theater” the FTP was able to pump new life into the dying theater of large cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, fulfilling one aim of the project, but the goal of integrating theater into the smaller cities of America through the development of independent, community, and experimental groups was never realized.” If the FTP had executed providing theatrical support better, it may have been much more

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