From 1935 to 1939, the Federal Theatre Project staged over 1,000 productions

in 29 states that were seen by 30 million (or nearly one in four) Americans, twothirds

of whom had never seen a play before. It employed over 12,000 struggling

artists, some of whom, like Orson Welles and Arthur Miller would soon be famous,

but most of them were just ordinary people eager to work again. And yet, the

Federal Theatre was the first New Deal project to be attacked and ended on the

grounds that it promoted “un-American” activity, sowing the seeds not only for

the McCarthyism of the 1950s but also for our own era of merciless polarization.

Celebrated Shakespeare scholar JAMES SHAPIRO will talk to Pulitzer Prizewinning

playwright AYAD AKHTAR about this little-known but important slice of

history and what it tells us about the enduring power of the theater as perhaps

our most democratic art form.