Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times
Starred Review. Quinn (Marie Curie) does a superb job of recounting the rise and fall of the Federal Theatre Project, a wing of FDR's WPA meant to employ playwrights and actors while providing diversion and inspiration for Depression-ravaged Americans. Quinn shows how, under the management of the irrepressible Hallie Flanagan, the left-leaning FTP facilitated such controversial masterpieces asTriple-A Plowed UnderandThe Cradle Will Rockwhile unintentionally setting the stage for the House Un-American Activities Committee and much of the red-baiting and blacklisting of the 1940s and '50s. TheDaily Workerapplauded FTP projects such as a dramatization of Sinclair Lewis's antifascist novel,It Can't Happen Here. Among the actors, directors and writers sponsored by the program were John Houseman, Orson Welles, Will Geer and Meyer Levin. Experimentation thrived: Welles oversaw an all-black production of a voodoo version ofMacbeththat played Broadway and toured nationwide. All of this Quinn describes eloquently and artfully, summoning a not-so-distant time when a nation bled and great artists rushed as healers into the countryside. B&w photos.(July)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.