Author: Library of Congress. Manuscript DivisionPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
The Federal Theatre Project Collection
Author: Library of Congress. Manuscript DivisionPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
A History of Dance in the Federal Theatre Project, Chicago, 1938-1939
Author: Jennifer RobbinsPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Modern dance
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
The Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939
Author: Rania KaroulaPublisher: Edinburgh Critical Studies in
ISBN: 9781474445498
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
This book presents a comparative study of the history, performances and politics of the FTP by drawing and exposing further links between American modernism and its European counterparts.
Sounds of the New Deal
Author: Peter GoughPublisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252097017
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
At its peak the Federal Music Project (FMP) employed nearly 16,000 people who reached millions of Americans through performances, composing, teaching, and folksong collection and transcription. In Sounds of the New Deal, Peter Gough explores how the FMP's activities in the West shaped a new national appreciation for the diversity of American musical expression. From the onset, administrators and artists debated whether to represent highbrow, popular, or folk music in FMP activities. Though the administration privileged using "good" music to educate the public, in the West local preferences regularly trumped national priorities and allowed diverse vernacular musics to be heard. African American and Hispanic music found unprecedented popularity while the cultural mosaic illuminated by American folksong exemplified the spirit of the Popular Front movement. These new musical expressions combined the radical sensibilities of an invigorated Left with nationalistic impulses. At the same time, they blended traditional patriotic themes with an awareness of the country's varied ethnic musical heritage and vast--but endangered--store of grassroots music.
Stepping Left
Author: Ellen GraffPublisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822319481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
Stepping Left simultaneously unveils the radical roots of modern dance and recalls the excitement and energy of New York City in the 1930s. Ellen Graff explores the relationship between the modern dance movement and leftist political activism in this period, describing the moment in American dance history when the revolutionary fervor of "dancing modern" was joined with the revolutionary vision promised by the Soviet Union. This account reveals the major contribution of Communist and left-wing politics to modern dance during its formative years in New York City. From Communist Party pageants to union hall performances to benefits for the Spanish Civil War, Graff documents the passionate involvement of American dancers in the political and social controversies that raged throughout the Depression era. Dancers formed collectives and experimented with collaborative methods of composition at the same time that they were marching in May Day parades, demonstrating for workers' rights, and protesting the rise of fascism in Europe. Graff records the explosion of choreographic activity that accompanied this lively period--when modern dance was trying to establish legitimacy and its own audience. Stepping Left restores a missing legacy to the history of American dance, a vibrant moment that was supressed in the McCarthy era and almost lost to memory. Revisiting debates among writers and dancers about the place of political content and ethnicity in new dance forms, Stepping Left is a landmark work of dance history.
Modern Dance, Negro Dance
Author: Susan ManningPublisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816637362
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
Two traditionally divided strains of American dance, Modern Dance and Negro Dance, are linked through photographs, reviews, film, and oral history, resulting in a unique view of the history of American dance.
The Playbook
Author: James ShapiroPublisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593490207
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385
Book Description
A brilliant and daring account of a culture war over the place of theater in American democracy in the 1930s, one that anticipates our current divide, by the acclaimed Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro From 1935 to 1939, the Federal Theatre Project staged over a thousand productions in 29 states that were seen by thirty million (or nearly one in four) Americans, two thirds of whom had never seen a play before. At its helm was an unassuming theater professor, Hallie Flanagan. It employed, at its peak, over twelve thousand struggling artists, some of whom, like Orson Welles and Arthur Miller, would soon be famous, but most of whom were just ordinary people eager to work again at their craft. It was the product of a moment when the arts, no less than industry and agriculture, were thought to be vital to the health of the republic, bringing Shakespeare to the public, alongside modern plays that confronted the pressing issues of the day—from slum housing and public health to racism and the rising threat of fascism. The Playbook takes us through some of its most remarkable productions, including a groundbreaking Black production of Macbeth in Harlem and an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s anti-fascist novel It Can’t Happen Here that opened simultaneously in 18 cities, underscoring the Federal Theatre’s incredible range and vitality. But this once thriving Works Progress Administration relief program did not survive and has left little trace. For the Federal Theatre was the first New Deal project to be attacked and ended on the grounds that it promoted “un-American” activity, sowing the seeds not only for the McCarthyism of the 1950s but also for our own era of merciless polarization. It was targeted by the first House un-American Affairs Committee, and its demise was a turning point in American cultural life—for, as Shapiro brilliantly argues, “the health of democracy and theater, twin born in ancient Greece, have always been mutually dependent.” A defining legacy of this culture war was how the strategies used to undermine and ultimately destroy the Federal Theatre were assembled by a charismatic and cunning congressman from East Texas, the now largely forgotten Martin Dies, who in doing so pioneered the right-wing political playbook now so prevalent that it seems eternal.
Research in Information Studies
Author: W. Bernard LukenbillPublisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 146917961X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 422
Book Description
Research is integrated into the whole fabric of modern-day society and culture. It affects our lives in so many waysfrom finding a job to knowing how to manage our health. Information studies designed to understand this array of information encompasses a wide expanse of disciplines. Many of these areas draw their philosophical and research bases from a mixture of disciplines within the social sciences and the humanities. This book takes a holistic view of these diverse areas and shows how they are united through the common thread of enhancing our knowledge of and understanding the world in which we all live.
African-American Concert Dance
Author: John O. PerpenerPublisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252026751
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
Provides biographical and historical information on a group of African-American artists who worked during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s to legitimize dance of the African diaspora as a serious art form.
Women, Art and the New Deal
Author: Katherine H. AdamsPublisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476662975
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229
Book Description
In 1935, the United States Congress began employing large numbers of American artists through the Works Progress Administration--fiction writers, photographers, poster artists, dramatists, painters, sculptors, muralists, wood carvers, composers and choreographers, as well as journalists, historians and researchers. Secretary of Commerce and supervisor of the WPA Harry Hopkins hailed it a "renascence of the arts, if we can call it a rebirth when it has no precedent in our history." Women were eminently involved, creating a wide variety of art and craft, interweaving their own stories with those of other women whose lives might not otherwise have received attention. This book surveys the thousands of women artists who worked for the U.S. government, the historical and social worlds they described and the collaborative depiction of womanhood they created at a pivotal moment in American history.