“Melodies on Parade,” one of the Federal Theatre Project’s original musical revues, in FTP’s Caravan Theater in Crotona Park in the Bronx, c. 1936. (Photo from the Federal Theatre Project Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress)
For more on the current call for increased arts funding, see this story.
To this day, when Greg Reiner (he/him) sees the name of Federal Theatre Project director Hallie Flanagan, he pictures Cherry Jones, the actress who portrayed Flanagan in Tim Robbins’s film on the arts in the 1930s, Cradle Will Rock. Having worked at Robbins’s ensemble company, the Actors’ Gang, in Los Angeles, many of whose members were involved in the film, Reiner holds both the movie and the story of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) close to his heart.
In fact, when Reiner was later working as executive director of Tectonic Theater Project, it was the FTP that served as