Staging the People: Community and Identity in the Federal Theatre Project by Elizabeth A. Osborne (review)

In Staging the People, Elizabeth Osborne presents a well-researched examination of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) that draws on extensive archival research to uncover rich details about lesser known productions, plays, and FTP units. Osborne organizes her detailed case studies into four chapters that examine each of the FTP’s four regions, with a fifth chapter focused on its touring activity. The book’s strength lies in Osborne’s demonstration of the paradox at the heart of the FTP: namely, how to create a national theatre while working within regionally specific political, social, cultural, and economic environments. Each chapter explores and clarifies the “relationship between the FTP and specific communities within the Midwest, South, East and West—both urban and rural” (9) that the FTP served and which, in turn, shaped its productions and operations in significant ways.

In chapter 1, Osborne explores the “political minefield” (15) of Chicago that FTP administrators faced as they attempted to navigate the city’s entrenched systems of “organized crime, abject poverty, rampant class stratification, and crooked politicians” (22). She argues that, within this fraught environment, the Chicago unit faced frequent threats of censorship, but that, despite these obstacles, its greatest challenge was determining its own identity. Focusing her discussion on the Chicago unit’s productions of O Say Can You Sing and Spirochete, Osborne points out the tension between local project heads who wanted to pursue commercial boxoffice hits and the Midwestern Play Bureau (headed by Susan Glaspell), as well as the many actors and playwrights who wanted to pursue a more experimental program.

Chapter 2 considers the FTP’s Boston unit, focusing on its attempt to define success on its own terms rather than in comparison to its larger and more artistically innovative neighbor, the New York City unit. Given the city’s anti–New Deal sentiments, this was not easy, but, as Osborne points out, two productions—Created Equal and Lucy Stone—represented important turning points for the beleaguered Boston unit. She argues that Created Equal’s success hinged on its ability to appeal to a working-class audience that had previously ignored the FTP’s productions, and Lucy Stone drew on the rich history of the city to present a relevant, uplifting, and noncontroversial production for the unit that invited civic identification.

In chapter 3, Osborne looks south to consider Birmingham’s production of Altars of Steel and the “Georgia Experiment” in which the FTP sent its personnel into small towns in Georgia to develop work in more rural settings. She begins the chapter with a clear analysis of the difficulties the FTP faced in the South, arguing that these difficulties were largely “due to a fundamental incompatibility between the FTP’s stated goal of producing dramas relevant to local communities and its own organizational structure” (86), which gathered theatre professionals in major urban areas. Osborne convincingly argues that while Altars of Steel and the Georgia Experiment were both successful in creating locally relevant theatre, both also exemplify how the FTP failed to gain a strong following among audience members throughout the South.

Osborne’s chapter 4 begins by challenging the somewhat rosy picture of the western units that FTP director Hallie Flanagan painted in her memoir Arena, and ends with an examination of the Portland unit’s productions of Yellow Harvest and Timberline Tintypes. While both productions serve as further examples of how the FTP capitalized on local themes and talents, Osborne also uses them as a case study of how the FTP operated outside of major urban centers. In turning her attention away from major productions and larger units, she encountered gaps in the archival materials available for the Portland unit. Acknowledging this problem, she offers a persuasive explanation, suggesting that fewer letters back and forth between unit heads and FTP’s national offices may have meant smoother operations in a unit free of controversy...