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- Title
Caricatured, Marginalized, and Erased: African American Artists and Philadelphia's Negro Unit of the FTP, 1936–1939.
- Authors
Shandell, Jonathan
- Abstract
That the FTP had shifted its Philadelphia activities toward material that enabled such transmutation, supported those efforts with experienced direction, and placed the results on a prestigious Center City stage represented "a highly recognizable advance from the position of its former efforts" in lowbrow buffoonery.13 This was a vital (though conspicuously imperfect) step toward a more vibrant future for Black theatre in Philadelphia. Caricatured, Marginalized, and Erased: African American Artists and Philadelphia's Negro Unit of the FTP, 1936-1939 Collaborating with Ben Russak and Harold Berman of the FTP's National Play Bureau, Malle stuck as carefully as possible to Aren't's original script: "We took the original New York script scene by scene and selected the best Philadelphia parallel, verbatim when possible and creating when necessary."19 The new adaptation ranges from the earliest history of settlement and land apportionment of Philadelphia (starting with William Penn's original plan for the city) through contemporary discussions about overcrowding, the spread of diseases, fire hazards, and greedy slumlords. In July 1937, Federal Theatre Project (FTP) leadership engineered what they hoped would be a distinct course correction for the project's Negro Unit in Philadelphia.
- Subjects
PHILADELPHIA (Pa.); AFRICAN American artists; CHOREOGRAPHERS; BLACK people; AFRICAN American actors; AFRICAN American actresses; GESTURE; PERFORMING arts
- Publication
Theatre History Studies, 2021, Vol 40, p1
- ISSN
0733-2033
- Publication type
Article