The Federal Theater Project

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Federal One Projects" (Davis, 466). Though the Federal Theatre Project caused a large amount of controversy among people in America, it was very important because during its short life it supplied jobs for many people working in the arts and it brought free theatre to America.

By 1935, there were almost fifteen million unemployed people in the United States, about forty thousand of those being people who were formerly employed in theatre. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps was created to give urban men jobs doing hard physical labor such as building roads or buildings. The WPA created the Federal One Projects, or Federal Arts Projects, in order to create job opportunities for those involved with art instead of physical work. The Federal Theatre Project was one of the larger of the projects, giving ten thousand actors minimum wage jobs. Not only did it affect the actors involved, it affected the general public by attracting millions of people from across country to the public ...

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these aspects was one of the units of the project, the Negro Theatre Project. Before this project, very few negroes were allowed any type of place in theatre or jobs relating to theatre. White unions and the prejudice against African Americans during this decade prevented most negroes from even stepping foot into a theatre, let alone perform or be involved with an actual show.

The creation of The Negro Theatre Project, sometimes referred to as "negro units", changed the restrictions on African American relation with the theatre. Rose McClendon, a well-known black actress, and John Houseman, a famous theatre producer, headed this project and truly believed that it would be accepted by ...

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