Roosevelt Fights Unemployment - WPA's Federal Theater Project – 27:06

Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands
Made High Art Out of Desperate Timeswith
author Susan Quinn

President Roosevelt on Unemployment and the
Works Progress Administration (WPA)

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Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands
Made High Art Out of Desperate Times
with
author Susan Quinn

A vivid portrait of the turbulent 1930s and the Roosevelt administration
as seen through the WPA’s Federal Theater Project which managed to
turn a WPA unemployment program into a platform for some of the most
cutting-edge theater of its time. It electrified audiences with exciting,
controversial productions, created by some of the greatest figures in
20th century American arts—including Orson Welles, John Houseman
and Sinclair Lewis. Plays like Voodoo Macbeth and The Cradle Will
Rock stirred up politicians by defying segregation and putting the
spotlight on the inequities that led to the Great Depression.
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President Roosevelt on Unemployment and the
Works Progress Administration (WPA)

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1935 fireside chat broadcast to
a national radio audience on unemployment, public job creation through
the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the pending Social
Security Act.