Depression Makes Good Theatre
...born under the Works Progress Administration, part of the New
Deal, to create jobs for unemployed theatre artists. The Federal Theatre Project (FTP)
created jobs for actors, designers, stagehands, and directors. It provided theatrical
productions across the United States for people at low or no cost to the theatergoer, many
of who could no longer afford to attend theatre due to the economic climate of the time. It
also created theatre in areas that had not actually had theatre. It provided jobs for people
of all colors. It started careers of people who would go down as some of the most lauded
names in theatrical and film history. It even created new forms of theatre.
It seems a prudent idea to start with a bit of history to put the era and events
therein into context. Largely due to the aftereffects of World War I, the 1920s was a
decade "at once wildly creative, liberating, desperate, and reckless." (Axelrod 239)
Americans purchased stock in record numbers. This would be a good thing, except for the
fact that most of them bought large amounts of stock on margin, putting down as little as
ten cents per dollar of stock. They hoped that the stock prices would rise quickly and
drastically in order for them to pay off the substantial loans they undertook in order to
make the stock purchases. (238)
To make matters worse, while the buying power of the public declined, the
production numbers in many factories rose. Companies continued to make much more of
their products than people were buying. Since their items weren't selling, they started laying people off. People without jobs tend to purchase less than people with jobs, and so
the market base shrank. Oddly, stock prices continued to rise as more people purchased
stocks, predominantly on margin. (Axelrod 238) This was a bad thing.
As summer became fall in 1929, the prices in the stock...
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