|
|
|
|
Studying the Trend in Youth Violence "And This Year's Awards Go To..." Simmons is Smith's Own "Alpha Woman"
|
Smithellanea: Remembering a Theatrical Trailblazer Hollywood writer-actor-director Tim Robbins' 1999 film Cradle Will Rock -- retelling the largely forgotten but incredible story of a politically charged and perilous time in the history of American theatre -- owes a huge debt of gratitude to Smith's own Hallie Flanagan. From 1942 to 1955, Flanagan served at Smith as dean of the college and also started the college's theatre department. But it was her work as head of the short-lived Federal Theatre Project (FTP) from 1936 to 1939 that brought Flanagan, who stood five feet tall and favored flowing capes and enormous hats, to the attention of Robbins. In a January interview with the Boston Globe, Robbins told a journalist that until he started researching theatre history, he had never heard of Flanagan. But he sat up and took notice when he uncovered the story of how, as head of the Federal Theatre Project for the New Deal's Works Project Administration, Flanagan had been forced to defend herself and the FTP in 1938 before the U.S. House of Representatives' Special Committee on Un-American Activities. She was interrogated as a "WPA Red" and eventually the FTP was denounced and derailed. Robbins, who said he spent nearly seven years researching and writing the script for Cradle Will Rock, was struck not only by Flanagan's dignity before the House committee but also by her vision and advocacy for public theatre. "She was-wow!-talk about an inspiring woman," Robbins told the Boston Globe. "She was so open to different kinds of theater, and managed this incredibly ambitious federal program that brought theater to one-quarter of the population." "People had never seen live theater before, and she wound up reaching 25 million people with different interpretations of classics and modern playwrights, but also experimental theater, political theater, social theater," said Robbins, who was a theatre major in college. "The thing I was most shocked about was that I hadn't heard about her. I wonder if a man had been head of it, or if it had been less controversial, whether it would have been part of the curriculum of the theater department." Eventually Flanagan's fight with the House committee disappeared into the shadows of history, and now only a few people remember the name of the woman who once was known to many as a visionary of the Depression. As head of the Federal Theatre Project, she led a national movement that spent $46 million on 12,000 actors as they staged some 830 plays in 31 states. By 1939, because of the accusations about the FTP's alleged communist tendencies, government funding for the project had been pulled. In 1942 Flanagan arrived at Smith, where she spent the next 13 years, serving as dean, professor of drama and theatre and director of theatre, and initiating Smith's drama theatre major. When she died in 1969 she left several memoirs and was lauded by such theatre notables as John Houseman for her trailblazing work in American theatre. She is still remembered at Smith through her namesake, the Hallie Flanagan Studio Theatre in the college's Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts. |
..............................................................................................................................................................
NewsSmith
is published by the Smith College Office of College Relations
for alumnae, staff, students and friends.
Copyright © 2000, Smith College. Portions of this publication
may be reproduced with the permission of the Office
of College Relations, Garrison Hall, Smith College, Northampton,
Massachusetts 01063. Last update: 5/2/2000.
Made
with Macintosh
Photo courtesy Smith College Archives