“Susan Quinn has gifted us with a key moment in the history of F.D.R.’s New Deal. Especially thrilling and revelatory is the work of the Arts Project of the WPA. Not only were there rakes and shovels, jobs and food for family, there was exhilarating and hopeful theatre, music, and painting, lifting our spirits. They gave us all hope.”
—Studs Terkel
“... a fascinating new book that describes a rare happy marriage between art and government. Susan Quinn's Furious Improvisation details the history of the WPA's Federal Theatre Project, a relief effort begun in the depths of the Great Depression to put thousands of actors and playwrights back to work and lift the spirits of down-and-out Americans by putting on high-quality theater.”
—Maureen Corrigan, National Public Radio (Play the embedded video below to hear this review.)
“When Hallie Flanagan became the director of the WPA’s Federal Theatre Project (FTP), no one imagined that she would use a federal relief program to offer some of the most cutting-edge and inventive theater seen on the American stage. Quinn, author of two outstanding biographies (Marie Curie; A Mind of Her Own: The Life of Karen Horney), focuses on the Roosevelt administration and the Depression, spotlighting one of the most compelling periods of American theater. Orson Welles, John Houseman, Sinclair Lewis, and others brought to audiences such controversial productions as The Cradle Will Rock and an all-black production of Macbeth for the residents of Harlem. Quinn’s well-written narrative is both fascinating and frightening as politics and idealism come to metaphorical blows with the rise of Martin Dies. Under his leadership, the House Un-American Activities Committee made the FTP the first victim of the Red Scare; in 1939, Congress and a reluctant President Roosevelt eliminated funding for the FTP and other WPA programs. Recommended for all large public libraries and all academic libraries.”
—Library Journal starred review
“Quinn (Marie Curie) does a superb job of recounting the rise and fall of the Federal Theatre Project, a wing of FDR’s WPA meant to employ playwrights and actors while providing diversion and inspiration for Depression-ravaged Americans. Quinn shows how, under the management of the irrepressible Hallie Flanagan, the left-leaning FTP facilitated such controversial masterpieces as Triple-A Plowed Under and The Cradle Will Rock while unintentionally setting the stage
for the House Un-American Activities Committee and much of the redbaiting and blacklisting of the 1940s and ’50s. The Daily Worker applauded FTP projects such as a dramatization of Sinclair Lewis’s antifascist novel, It Can’t Happen Here. Among the actors, directors and writers sponsored by the program were John Houseman, Orson Welles, Will Geer and Meyer Levin. Experimentation thrived: Welles oversaw an all-black production of a ‘voodoo’ version of Macbeth that played Broadway and toured nationwide. All of this Quinn describes eloquently and artfully, summoning a not-so-distant time when a nation bled and great artists rushed as healers into the countryside.”
—Publisher's Weekly starred review
“Susan Quinn’s Furious Improvisation—a great title for an excellent book, a model of narrative history—tells the story of the Federal Theatre Project, an offshoot of F.D.R.’s Works Progress Administration.”
—Scott Eyman, The New York Observer
“The short-lived Federal Theatre Project (born 1935, died 1939) is Susan Quinn’s subject. With her well-researched and engaging book, she makes the case that this national theater was fully worth the investment in tax dollars. One can feel the envy in Quinn’s writing as she describes production after production she never got to see.”
—David Cohen, The Phildelphia Inquirer
“Plays addressing social issues got the most publicity, but they constituted only 10% of the menu, and Quinn is careful to do justice to the project's vast scope. Its scrappy, improvisatory gusto is highlighted by "The CCC Murder Mystery," which nine different companies took to Civilian Conservation Corps camps around the country.”
—Wendy Smith, author of Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940, in the Los Angeles Times
“This fine book combines elements of political history, theater lore, and a saga of social justice. In showing us a rare triumph of bold artists in league with brave public servants, Quinn rescues the idea that the imagination and government can be friends instead of strangers. Our times are desperate, too, and Furious Improvisation comes at just the right moment.”
—James Carroll, author of House of War
“Susan Quinn’s Furious Improvisation is a fascinating account of a fleeting moment in American history when the U.S. government felt some obligation to provide work for its more indigent citizens, including artists. Hallie Flanagan, the heroine of this book, emerges as a true saint of the theatre—passionate, visionary, and inspired. Well-written and thoroughly engrossing.”
—Robert Brustein
“Susan Quinn has already proven herself a master at depicting the lives of exceptional women, and in Hallie Flanagan she has found a compelling successor to her previous subjects, Marie Curie and Karen Horney. As the head of the New Deal’s glorious but doomed Federal Theatre Project, Flanagan is the protagonist of a neglected chapter in the pivotal Roosevelt years. With a cast of period icons ranging from Harry Hopkins to Orson Welles, Quinn’s fast-paced, highly readable narrative exposes the myriad ‘-isms’— racism, sexism, communism, fascism—defying the birthright of a young democracy whose survival was still very much in question. A provocative reminder of how consistent our national conflicts remain.”
—Diane McWhorter, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Carry Me Home
“Gore Vidal refers to our country as the United States of Amnesia. It is urgent that everyone read this remarkable book about the extraordinary work that took place under FDR’s guidance, when an entire population was rescued from unemployment. And more extraordinary than that was the inclusion of artists and theater people. This is unique in our country’s history.”
—Ellen Adler, artist, member of theatrical family of Jacob and Stella Adler.
“A brilliant, riveting account of the most tempestuous times in American history and the woman at the dramatic and dangerous center of the maelstrom.”
—Barbara Goldsmith, bestselling author and historian
Interviews:
“The story of the Project (which lasted four successful years thanks to theater producer Hallie Flanagan) and of the genre-breaking theatrical effort is now the subject of the new book, Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art Out of Desperate Times, written by Brookline resident and former journalist Susan Quinn.
“‘I started out writing a biography on Hallie,” said Quinn, who has written biographies on physicist Marie Curie and psychologist Karen Horney. “But I found there was a better, bigger story in the entire issue. The Federal Theatre dealt with everything going on, so I told the story of the Great Depression through the lens of the Theater Project.’” Read more...
—The Brookline Tab
Listen to a 27 minute interview with Susan Quinn about her book on AARP radio. (Click the Listen with Real Audio link under High Art out of Desperate Times.)
