Tag Archives: WPA

September 9, 2024

The Play’s the Thing

By daseger

I’ve always been curious about the local impact of the various initiatives of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s, and when I first looked into Salem’s experience I didn’t find much. Then I found more WPA projects, and published a mea culpa post. And now I think that the WPA program which had the biggest impact on Salem was the ambitious Federal Theater Project (FTP), which ran from 1935-39. The FTP had a dual mission: to provide work to unemployed actors and theater professionals by funding perfomances across the country and to engage a larger and more diverse audience for an art form that had been impacted dramatically not only by the Depression but also by the rise of the film industry. At its height, the FTP employed around 12,000 people and it subsidized 1200 productions over its four-year run, including a whole season of new plays performed in the Empire Theater in Salem. At the outset, Boston had been chosen as one of the regional centers of the FTP, but there were censorship challenges (“banned in Boston”) that affected productions there, so after a rocky first season in 1936-1937, Salem was chosen as the site of the second season’s offerings, and 26 plays were performed at the Empire in 1937-38. The FTP was conspicuous from its foundation for the perceived “radical” messaging of some of its plays, and while it’s difficult to think of Puritan Salem as more progressive than Brahmin Boston, that seems to have been the case in the 1930s!

All the posters above are from the Federal Theater Project collection at the Library of Congress, which also includes programs and other materials. Many of these plays, mounted weekly as you can see, were really big productions, with sizable casts and crew, and the programs indicate that Salem businesses also contributed to the production: furniture, flowers and textiles for the sets, food for the performers and stagehands. These performances (161 over the entire season!) must have been a boost to the entire community, which was also able to attend the performances at discounted prices. The FTP also included the Negro Theater Project, specifically focused on providing employment for African American actors, stagehands and playwrights, who were part of several Salem productions. The Empire Theater was full for all five nights of each production throughout the season, and the popularity of the FTP productions in Salem led to the production of two world premieres as well as its selection as one of only four cities across the US (with Detroit, San Diego, and Des Moines) to feature Bernard Shaw’s popular play Arms and the Man. Through the dark days of the Depression in Salem, the Empire Theater, “home of the spoken drama,” was providing quite a bit of light in that one busy year.

5 Comments | tags: 20th Century, Depression, ephemera, Library of Congress, Salem Theaters, Theater, WPA | posted in Culture

April 12, 2016

Artistic Nationalism

By daseger

I started this blog to indulge in the discovery (and rediscovery) of Salem’s history, but also American history, which I haven’t really studied in any depth since high school. And I’ve completely forgotten what I learned then, or before, because it was the same old narrative, year after year, Plymouth to Ford’s Theater again and again and again. Past politics. So boring–I hated history by the time I went away to college and was determined to avoid it by majoring in something that was almost completely contrary to my interests and talents: economics. But my time abroad, along with the few history courses I allowed myself to take, convinced me that it was only American history that was boring, so I went on to get my Ph.D. in European history and become a history professor, which is quite simply the best job ever. Of course now I know that American history is not boring (though it is short), because I’ve uncovered more of its layers, including that which is most interesting to me: its culture. My American history curriculum starts with creativity and ends with events, and so I tend to fall down a rabbit hole when I encounter an amazing database like the Index of American Design, a project that commissioned Depression-era artists to produce nearly 18,000 watercolor renderings of traditional American arts and crafts made before 1900 under the auspices of the Federal Arts Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The project encompassed 34 states, regional exhibitions of the renderings, and the creation of a permanent inventory of reference materials with which one can rediscover American material culture again and again and again–as accessed today through the portal of the National Gallery of Art.

Robert Pohle, “Sheaf of Wheat” Shop Sign, American, active c. 1935, 1935/1942, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on paper, Index of American Design

Index renderings are photographic in their simplicity and detail: the artists are documenting and creating at the same time. Like all WPA initiatives, the Index was first and foremost a way to put unemployed people, in this case artists, to work, but like several FAP projects, the goal of archiving all forms of American culture seems to be just as important. The artists of the Index of American Design, just like the architects of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), used their own artistry to capture and preserve American artistry, as a form and expression of artistic nationalism. Their meticulous drawings of shop signs, andirons, cabinets, dolls and dresses, showcased in a series of national exhibitions, enabled an anxious American audience to discover (or rediscover) its own cultural identity, through very familiar forms.

Margaret Knapp, Silver Teapot, American, active c. 1935, 1934, graphite on paper, Index of American Design

Lillian Causey, Quilt, applique, American, active c. 1935, Index of American Design

Bessie Forman, Dress, American, active c. 1935, 1935/1942, watercolor and graphite on paper, Index of American Design

Bessie Forman, Man’s Hat, American, active c. 1935, 1935/1942, watercolor and graphite on paperboard, Index of American Design

There are several Salem items in the Index (of course), including some very primitive wooden dolls, a cartouche, and a very characteristic chair. I’m biased, I know, but I think more Salem items should have been included–and wondering if the democratization goals of the Index worked against seats of “high” culture?

Beverly Chichester, Salem Dolls, American, active c. 1935, 1935/1942, watercolor, graphite, and gouache on paperboard, Index of American Design

Alfred H. Smith, Cartouche from Salem Gate, American, active c. 1935, c. 1939, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on paperboard, Index of American Design