Blueprints for a Black Federal Theatre Hardback: 81 (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, Series Number 81) - Tapa dura

"Fraden's active yet balanced voice makes the work approachable for the casual reader yet her meticulous exploration of cultural and political frictions inside and beyond the project represents a significant contribution to the study of Negro FT making it required reading for any serious scholar of not only the Federal Theatre Project but of the American theatre scene of the 1930's." Theatre Studies, Vol. 41

"This major work is complex and scholarly. A critical and historical analysis of the purpose, plays, audiences and actors of the Federal Theatre of 1935-39, Blueprints for a Black Federal Theatre is compelling....useful to theatre students (and others) because of the rich and copious notes." Glenda E. Gill, Theatre Survey

"Rena Fraden's 'Blueprint for a Black Federal Theatre' will also be a useful textbook for teaching African American theatre history. Fraden has distinguished her work from that of her major forerunners....'Blueprint' substantially enhance[s] our understanding of African American theatre and will enliven classroom discussions with the cogent and timely arguments [it] present[s]." Joni jones, Drama Review

The Negro units of the Federal Theatre Project were one of the highly controversial, cutting-edge expressions of New Deal philosophy at work within the Works Progress Administration's Arts Projects. This experiment in government-supported culture during the late 1930s brought to the forefront one of the central problems in American democratic culture - the representation of racial difference. As WPA, the FTP and writers like Richard Wright and Theodore Ward attempted to make art more relevant and more accessible to more people, they often came up against a conflict between their high-minded sense of what art could accomplish and the demands of their audience for popular entertainment. At a time when the tradition of black entertainment had come to seem suspect to many of the black intelligentsia and black artists, the provocative question of how political or entertaining black theatre should be was rendered especially problematic. Those working in the profession quickly discovered the inescapable ideological responsibilities that come of opening a curtain on any sort of show, whether apparently entertaining or political in nature. Blueprints for a Black Federal Theatre goes on to explore the historical context of its subject, taking up the liberal idealism of the thirties and the critical debates in black journals over the role of a national theatre for African Americans. Surveying the difficulties of writing new plays that broke with old stereotypes, the conflicting demands audiences made for different kinds of dramas, and the role of the "essentially dramatic" black actor, the book offers broad and timely reflections on issues of cultural separatism and multiculturalism that continueto engage the arts today.