Access Restrictions

None

Historical Information

The Federal Theatre Project (FTP) began in 1935 as part of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration, employing several thousand actors, directors, playwrights, producers and others in the performing arts industry during the Great Depression. During its four-year run the FTP produced plays, musicals, dance and radio programs, circuses, and marionette shows. It featured the early works of actors and producers such as Orson Welles, Arthur Miller, and Elia Kazan. The federal government discontinued the program in 1939, and thousands of scripts, photographs, posters, and other FTP records were dispersed between the National Archives, the Library of Congress, public libraries, and educational institutions. For over twenty-five years the main body of these records sat forgotten in a government-owned storage facility at Middle River, near Baltimore, Maryland until they were located by George Mason University English professors, Lorraine Brown and John O'Connor.

After Brown and O'Connor's discovery, and realizing the historical significance of these records, George Mason University entered into negotiations with the Library of Congress for permission to house and care for the collection and provide access to the materials to scholars. Many of the materials were physically deteriorating after so many years in less-than-ideal storage conditions. An agreement was reached, and the collection was placed on loan to George Mason University Libraries, with the aim that the collection would be processed, cared for, and used by scholars of the FTP and WPA. A center named The Research Center for the Federal Theatre Project was established at Mason, and a staff of archives and library professionals was hired to process, describe, and provide access to the records in Mason's Fenwick Library.

While initially, the center was focused on unpacking, sorting, processing, and inventorying the collection, it soon concentrated on disseminating the materials and facilitating scholarship regarding the FTP. It participated in grants to preserve the materials and produce programming and exhibitions to expose the materials to a larger audience. It continued to build on the collection by conducting oral history interviews of former FTP personnel, acquisition their personal papers, and photographic duplication of deteriorating records inside the collection, such as original posters, set, and costume design drawings. George Mason University Libraries established its Special Collections & Archives (SC&A) department in 1979, and the Federal Theatre Project Materials became a collection under the custody of that entity.

In 1980 the Research Center for the Federal Theatre Project was renamed the Institute on the Federal Theatre Project (IFTP), part of the newly established Center for Government, Society, and the Arts (CGSA).

In 1993, the Library of Congress began the process of recalling collections that it had loaned to libraries across the country over the years, including the rich archives of the FTP housed at George Mason University. LC administrators suggested that the collection would be more accessible at the Library's Music Division in Washington, D.C. rather than in Fairfax. While the bulk of the original loaned collection was eventually returned to the Library in August of 1994, George Mason University Libraries was allowed to retain duplicates of many of the records to complement the additional materials it had independently acquired between 1975 and 1994. After the replevin of the FTP materials back to the Library of Congress, the IFTP focused more of its attention on the study of the American National Theater and Academy (ANTA's) work in the Coldwar era, promoting the papers of Robert Breen, Director of ANTA, which are also held by George Mason University's Special Collections Research Center (formerly Special Collections & Archives). The CGSA and IFTP ceased operation during the summer of 1998.

Scope and Contents

Collection contains records pertaining to the operation of the the Institute on the Federal Theatre Project (IFTP) and its prior iteration, the Research Center for the Federal Theatre Project (RCFTP). These records include operational, research and correspondence files, materials related to the Institute's outreach, programming, audiovisual and photographic materials and publications.

The collection is organized within the following series:

Series 1: Administrative Records: These records consist of materials which document the day to day operation of the IFTP, its projects, initiatives, and development.

Series 2: Correspondence: This series contains manuscript and typewritten correspondence between IFTP personel and their colleagues and outside individuals and groups.

Series 3: Outreach Activities Records: These materials document the IFTP's efforts to provide external programming to promote and disseminate scholarship pertaining to and public awareness of the FTP throuugh exhibits, talks, and other programming.

Series 4: IFTP Publications: This series contains pamphlets detailing IFTP programs, organizational brochures and other publications created by IFTP to assist scholars in researching the FTP, Federal One, the newsletter of the RCFTP and IFTP, Free Adult and Uncensored, which details the history of the FTP, and other publications which promote and facilitate understanding of the FTP collection housed at George Mason University.

Series 5: Photographs: This series contains photographs created or procured by the IFTP. Featured are its personel, events, and programs, copy photographs of original FTP photos, posters, and other graphic items.

Series 6: Indexes, Inventories, and Collection Control Records: These records document the IFTP and RCFTP's fifteen-year effort to inventory, process, index, and describe the FTP collection.

Series 7: Research Materials: These consist of original FTP records descrbing plays and play types, newspaper and magazine articles and clippings, hearing transcripts, and other publications from scholars and government entities pertaining to FTP and WPA used to study FTP personel and the plays, dance, and music that it produced.

Series 8: Audiovisual materials include audio and videotapes of documentaries pertaining to the FTP, programs presented by the IFTP, such as panel discussions, lectures, and symposia, and productions of original FTP plays staged during the 1980s and 1990s. SCRC staff must be consulted for information regarding access to these records.

Related Material

Please see "External Documents" heading below to browse materials related to this collection.

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• Ballet
• Dance
• Federal Theatre Project (U.S.)
• Theater programs
• United States. Works Progress Administration