It Will Happen Here

1936 Cleveland Production, Carter Theatre
Last week the good folks at Cleveland Public Theatre were appraised of a special event with Cleveland historical significance -- theaters around the nation are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Federal Theatre Project’s nationwide opening of It Can’t Happen Here, the stage adaptation of the 1935 best-selling novel by Sinclair Lewis.

Brief background: The prove the scope of the Federal Theatre was capable of, and of its organizational abilities, it was suggested that a large number of participating theater across the nation open the exact same play on the exact same night. Why this particular play?

“Because it is a play about American life today, based on a passionate
belief in American democracy.” - Hallie Flanagan, Federal Theatre Director

Enough said. The synopsis is simple enough; the good people of the United States, in dire economic straits, elect an attractive, populist senator as
President of the United States, who immediately begins a number of social programs which we might recognize as Fascist (see: Mussolini, Hitler.) Newspaper are closed, unions are centralized by the federal government. The entire story is told from the perspective of a small town in Vermont, and how these changes affect the citizens there.

In presenting the work is 21 different theaters in 18 cities across the nation, each theater was encouraged to adapt the work to their locale, so long as the design did not strain to emulate specific persons or political parties.

“Avoid all controversial issues … Our business is wholly a job of theatre.” - Federal Theatre Policy Statement

Good luck with that.

It Can’t Happen Here opened on October 27, 1936 in Cleveland at the Carter Theatre (redubbed “Federal Theatre”) at East 9th and Prospect in downtown Cleveland, kitty-corner from the Gateway, exactly where Marvel/Disney has been blowing up cars and buildings just this past week. The run was so successful it was sold out for three weeks and only closed because a children’s puppet show was scheduled to take its place in December.

Last week Cleveland Public Theatre contacted me to direct the staged reading scheduled for Monday, October 24, 2011 to celebrate this anniversary, and I was only too happy to get involved. I will provide details of the event as it develops.

This reading will be free and open to the public.


Photo from the Cleveland production.

Poster

Wow. Don't know how I missed this.

Source: Special Collections & Archives (SC&A), George Mason University Libraries

McDermott on the Federal Theatre's "Macbeth" (1936)

Charles Collins as Macduff

COLORED ACTORS TAKE MACBETH TO THE TROPICS
William F. McDermott
The Plain Dealer, September 30, 1936

A tropical and riotously colored carnival ... the gentle Bard of Avon is bedecked with voodoo dances, tom-toms, savage noises, strange writhings and as fine a set of fancy-dress ball uniforms as ever dazzled and audience.

The most extraordinary production of 'Macbeth' that the American theater has ever seen and it is one of the most interesting to pass this was in my time ... a good show and an exciting spectacle ... grotesque, wild, tumultuous.

As Shakespearean production goes it is a stunt, but a successful stunt ... many lines are lost because they who speak them have not enough practice in the delivery of blank verse... the critical moments are sometimes dimmed because the actors are obviously not equal to them ... yet, these colored actors succeed in bringing Shakespeare alive. They give him strange dimensions, they distort his meaning ... but they infuse him with some of their own excitement and lend him their own special nimbleness and pungency.

Colored folk are natural actors. They have histrionic temperament. They play spontaneously and with gusto. Their weakness is a tendency to overact. Shakespeare warned against it; but his plays can stand a whirlwind of passion. They are better overacted than underacted.

Maurice Ellis as Macbeth, Edna Thomas as Lady Macbeth, Canada Lee (Banquo) and Charles Collins (Macduff) are singled out for praise.

The director is never mentioned.

Newsreel footage of the Federal Theatre's "Macbeth"

Orson Welles

"I accept direction from one person...under protest."

George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was born in 1915 in Kenosha, Wisconsin and immediately began directing Shakespeare. The product of what used to be called a "broken home" he was raised by a family friend, spent a great deal of time in private schools, and once ran away from home at age ten with the daughter of his guardian to be found with her days later singing and dancing on a street corner.

His alcoholic father died when he was fifteen, gaining a small inheritance which he used to travel to Europe where he lied about his credentials and began acting professionally. Returning to America he made a living as a radio actor, married an actress, fathered a child, and was chosen by John Houseman to perform for the Federal Theatre Project. Then he had his twentieth birthday.

His sensational FTP production of Macbeth went on tour following its New York run, visiting Cleveland in Fall, 1936. Much was made in the press when he recast the title role. Though Welles had bonded with former lead Jack Carter, the actor's drinking made sending him around the country a non-issue, and Maurice Ellis was given the role. In Indianapolis, Evans was too ill to go on and Welles flew out to assume the role in blackface.

The Cleveland performance must have been in the Carter Theatre (the address in the News was East 9th & Prospect in the "Federal Theatre") just prior to the run of It Can't Happen Here.

R.U.R. - or - Rossum’s Universal Robots (1936)

Ja tvoi rabotnik.

HELENA
But man is suppsed to be the product of God.

DOMIN
All the worse. God hasn’t the slightest notion of modern engineering.
Karel Capek’s R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) was originally written in Czech in 1921, with a translation provided by Paul Selver and Nigel Playfair. It as produced by the Cleveland Repertory Unit of the Federal Theatre Project at the Carter Theater in September, 1936.

Inspired no doubt by the Frankenstein story, this tale establishes the template for all future stories about artificial intelligence. What happens when man plays God and creates a being stronger than itself?

The character of Rossum and his son, who created this biological creature (the notes state that “robot” is simply the Czech word for “worker”) never appear, they are this story’s pre-history. The character of Domin has taken their creation, and made a business out of it. His dream is to rid our species of toil. We will all be aristocrats, liberated from work. The robot does not feel, does not want, does not care. The perfect slave.

But this is all metaphor, right? We never want to think that those who work for us care, or feel, or want. They are happy where they are. They would not have it any other way. The worker does, however, rise up against its oppressor, to disastrous results - for everyone, including the robots.

"R.U.R." Program
(Carter Theatre, 1936)

Reading period plays, I am constantly amazed at how many ideas are, well ... old. As a result of the preponderance of substitute people (though we are reminded more than once, “robots are not people”) people ceased to be able to procreate. Nature is out of balance. We are creating life that replaces us, and the life-force assumes we no longer need to reproduce in the old-fashioned way.

Cleveland Plain Dealer - September 8, 1936 Federal Theater Here Produces Karel Kapek’s ‘R.U.R.’ Robot Play, review by William McDermott

McDermott spends over half of the review lamenting for-profit theater and lambasting this exercise in providing work to unemployed actors. Fourteen paragraphs in, he begins to discuss the play itself.

Neither the play nor the performance would have the slightest chance of success in the ordinary operation of the commerical theater.

Much better plays of this sort are written today by men like Odets. But "R.U.R.", in its time had a certain tension, excitement and significance. For two acts the author builds and atmosphere of universal ominousness - and when the roots (sic) finally revolt, there should be a scene of magnificent terror.

In this performance neither the preparation nor the denoument despite a couple a couple of worthy personations had any quality of the sinister or any feeling of passionate resentment, or any of that high note of dramatic awesomeness which is the very essence of the theme.

“Dramatic awesomeness.” With two words, I suddenly begin enjoying McDermott’s review.

The play, in short, escaped the actors. I suppose some of it was lost in the spacious, and largely empty recesses of the Carter Theater, for many of the lines echoed through the unoccupied reaches of the theater and were not clearly received by such ears as were there to receive them.

No, he’s a dick.

Carter Theatre

From Cinema Treaures:

Carter Theater
Cleveland, OH
2071 E. 9th Street

According to the online Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, "It opened in 1917 as the Miles Theater under the direction of president and general manager Chas. H. Miles. The 2,000-seat theater cost nearly $500,000. Billed as "America's most beautiful vaudeville palace," it was decorated in the Louis XIV style in a color scheme of old rose, ivory, cream, and gold, with DuBarry damask on the walls and mahogany seats upholstered in rich green velour, which matched the carpeting. The stuccoed walls contained two French murals on the spaces over the proscenium boxes. The auditorium contained twelve proscenium boxes, twenty-six mezzanine boxes, and two aero boxes. The backs of the seats were equipped with slot machines that would dispense candy for $.05. In 1920, the Miles Theater became a burlesque house and changed its name to the Columbia Theater.

Movies were introduced in 1931, when it became the Great Lakes Theater. For a while in 1935 it was called the Miles Theater again and featured vaudeville and first-run movies, then it was a movie theater called the Carter Theater. In 1936, it became the Federal Theater, part of the FTP.

Operating as the Miles Theater again, it was called a "flophouse with a soundtrack" according to a 1937 article in the Plain Dealer. Sometime in 1937 it became the Carter Theater again, owned by the Community Theater Circuit.

In 1954, the plaster ceiling fell, injuring 10 patrons. The theater was torn down in 1959.

R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)

Written in 1920, this work from Czech playwright Karel Capek is widely considered to be the origin of the word robot. Artificial workers rise up to slay their masters. It's a time-worn story (see: Frankenstein, or Blade Runner) but we heard it here first.

The Czech word robota means "drudgery" or "servitude"; a robotnik is a peasant or serf. Although the term today conjures up images of clanking metal contraptions, Capek's Robots (always capitalized) are more accurately the product of what we would now call genetic engineering. The play describes "kneading troughs" and "vats" for processing a chemical substitute for protoplasm, and a "stamping mill" for forming Robot bodies. - Dennis G. Jerz

It was produced by the Cleveland Repertory Unit at the Carter Theatre, the same ensemble who would perform It Can't Happen Here in October.

Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival produced R.U.R. at the Lakewood Civic Auditorium in 1970.

It Can't Happen Here

"It Can't Happen Here" is a semi-satirical political novel by Sinclair Lewis published in 1935. It features newspaperman Doremus Jessup struggling against the fascist regime of President Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip. In 1936, Lewis and John C. Moffitt wrote a stage version which is still produced. The stage version premiered on October 27, 1936 in several U.S. cities simultaneously, in productions sponsored by the Federal Theater Project. - Wikipedia

Complete text at Project Gutenberg

The play opened in 18 different cities, including a Cleveland production at the Carter Theater on East 9th Street, directed by Theodore Veihman. This production brought the story from Vermont to central Ohio, and included references to Akron and Cleveland.

 The three-week run featured the Federal Music Project Marching Band on its sold-out opening night, and critic William McDermott (no fan of the FTP) wrote in the Plain Dealer that the show "sometimes moves slowly, but it moves." - Showtime in Cleveland

"We Want to do 'It Can't Happen Here' because it is a play by one of our most distinguished American writers. We want to do it because it is a play about American life today, based on a passionate belief in American democracy.

The play says that when dictatorship comes to threaten such a democracy, it comes in a harmless guise, with parades and promises; but that when such dictatorship arrives, the promises are not kept and the parade grounds become encampments.

We want to do 'It Can't Happen Here' because, like Doremus Jessup and his creator, Sinclair Lewis, we, as American citizens and as workers in a theatre sponsored by the government of the United States, should like to do what we can to keep alive the 'free, inquiring, critical spirit' which is the center and core of a democracy."

- Hallie Flanagan from "Free, adult, uncensored: The living history of the Federal Theatre Project"

Would you know a dictatorship coming if you saw one? I mean ... really?