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Creator
Works Progress Administration. Federal Theatre Project
Call number
*T-Mss 2000-005
Physical description
30 linear feet (73 boxes)
Language
English
Preferred Citation

WPA Radio Scripts, *T-Mss 2000-005. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Repository
Billy Rose Theatre Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.Restrictions apply

Radio scripts from WPA's Federal Theatre of the Air.

Biographical/historical information

The Federal Theatre Project was a special program of the Works Progress Administration, itself a government program designed to counter the deleterious impact of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Created in 1935 by executive order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Federal Theatre Project was headed by Hallie Flanagan, a former Professor of English from Vassar College. In its four years of existence the F.T.P. employed some 12,700 theater professionals in 31 states, and presented more than 1,000 performances each month, free of charge.

The Federal Theatre Project produced over 1,200 plays in its four-year history, introducing 100 new playwrights. Artists established or aided in their careers by the Federal Theatre Project in include Orson Welles, John Houseman, Arthur Miller, Elmer Rice, Marc Blitzstein, Joseph Losey, Paul Green, Will Geer and Canada Lee. Playwrights whose works were staged by the Federal Theatre Project include T. S. Eliot, Sinclair Lewis, George Bernard Shaw, Eugene O'Neill and William Shakespeare, whose Macbeth was staged by Welles and Houseman in Harlem with an All African-American cast, to considerable acclaim

In addition to its stage production units, the F.T.P. reached an estimated 10 million listeners with its Federal Theatre of the Air radio programs, broadcast over all the major networks. Congress, however, concerned about the Federal Theatre Project's leftist tilt, abolished the program in 1939.

Scope and arrangement

The WPA Radio Scripts consist of final drafts of radio plays and other texts produced by the Federal Theatre of the Air. Most scripts are from either the New York or Los Angeles offices of the Federal Theatre Project. In some instances copies of scripts for the same program but from different jurisdictions are included in the same series. Notable programs represented in the collection include adaptations of the plays of Henrik Ibsen and Oscar Wilde, operettas by Gilbert & Sullivan, a series called A Capella in Bronze featuring the WPA Negro Radio Chorus and focusing on stories of particular interest to African-Americans, adaptations of books such as Dickens' Pickwick Papers and plays such as Tolstoy's Redemption, Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer and Moliére's Tartuffe. A 1939 series celebrating Jazz entitled The Story of Swing devotes episodes to Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and the Dorsey Brothers. Turning Points in Famous Lives dramatizes key moments in the lives of John Paul Jones, Sarah Bernhardt, Louis Pasteur, Isaac Newton, Billy the Kid, Joseph Stalin, and others. The Living Newspaper, adapted from a concurrent Federal Theatre Project stage production, dramatizes contemporary problems facing listeners in daily life.

The WPA Radio Scripts are arranged in 121 series:

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Unknown

Processing information

Processed by Mary Ellen Rogan; Machine-readable finding aid created by Mary Ellen Rogan.

Using the collection

Location

Billy Rose Theatre Division
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-7498
Third Floor

Conditions Governing Use

For permission to publish, contact the Curator, Billy Rose Theatre Division.

Access restrictions

Some collections held by the Dance, Music, Recorded Sound, and Theatre Divisions at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts are held off-site and must be requested in advance. Please check the collection records in the NYPL's online catalog for detailed location information. For general guidance about requesting offsite materials, please consult: https://www.nypl.org/about/locations/lpa/requesting-archival-materials Photocopying prohibited.