A National Theater.

In 1935 Works Progress Administration director Harry Hopkins tapped respected Vassar College drama director Hallie Flanagan to head the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), whose purpose would not only be to provide employment to thousands of unemployed actors, directors, set designers, and costume designers, but also to create a theater that would be affordable and accessible to all. Each state was to have its own FTP chapter, from which it would develop productions suitable for that state. Between its founding in 1935 and its loss of funding in 1939 at the hands of the House Un-American Activities Committee, the FTP produced farces; marionette shows; children's plays; modern dramas such as T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral and Sinclair Lewis and John C. Moffitt's It Can't Happen Here (which opened simultaneously in seventeen cities, including Yiddish- and Spanish-language productions); productions of William Shakespeare...