An Aesthetic of Backstage Labor / Essin, Christin

Essin, Christin, «An Aesthetic of Backstage Labor». Theatre Topics; Baltimore, 21,  1, (2011), pp. 33-48

Abstract
Because they had participated in the process, they recognized the photographs as products of labor themselves taken by someone invested in their work. The FTP histories tend to emphasize the experimental nature and political content of dramatic texts over production practices.1 Themes of labor frequently enter the discussion, since many FTP plays featured labor politics, including Paul Green’s Hymn to the Rising Sun (portraying the injustices of chain-gang labor in the South [1936]) and Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock (1937), a musical depicting the political corruption of allegorical “Steeltown, U.S.A.” But an examination of the labor needed to realize these productions brings a fresh perspective to the FTP’s employment objectives and, more generally, Depression-era labor politics. Founded in 1935 (originally as the Resettlement Administration), FSA photographers documented the economic difficulties encountered by farmers and other rural populations; Lange’s images of migrant workers in California (most famously her “Migrant Madonna”) and Evans’s images of Alabama sharecroppers (published with James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men) captured the ordeals of individuals struggling to survive regional hardships, while also symbolizing a broader landscape of human desperation and geographical desolation. While WPA photographers have received significantly less attention than their FSA counterparts, producing less provocative images with limited opportunities for circulation, both groups adhered to a common set of artistic practices, operated within government-financed agencies (both beginning during the summer of 1935), and followed similar directives to document the social landscape of the Depression-era economy.

Other data

ISSN: 1086-3346
DOI: 10.1353/tt.2011.0012
URL: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/421027
Language: EN
key: 89FQYU59