Withdrawal of Major Backer
Forces Cancellation of
Hallie

The Anglican Examiner
The Anglican Examiner, Copyright by Donn Mitchell, 2012
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her legacy of Social Security.
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Furious Improvisation Details
Federal Theatre Project History
Hallie, originally set to be performed May 19
at
New York's Church of the Holy Apostles,
has been cancelled due to the withdrawal of a
major backer.  The play
is  about the dynamic
director of the New Deal-era Federal Theatre
Project, Hallie Flanagan.  It is also the story of
t
he personal cost of the quest for creativity.  
Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made
High Art
Out of Desperate Times by Susan Quinn tells the story of the
largest theatrical enterprise in American history
.  The Federal Theatre
Project
employed 12,000 out-of work, actors, writers, directors, and
other theatre workers.
A portion of the project's history was recounted in the 1999 film,  The
Cradle
Will Rock, written and directed by Tim Robbins and featuring
a star-studded cast
.
$14.80
$9.99
$21.00
$3.95
Quinn is the award-winning author of Marie Curie: A Life and A Mind
of Her Own: The Life of Karen Horney
,  She is currently at work on a
book about Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickock.
The project produced both original and classic works, such as T.S.
Eliot’s
Murder in the Cathedral and a celebrated "all-Negro Voodoo"
Macbeth.  The Federal Theatre also included Yiddish, German,
French, and Italian-speaking units.  However, it was plagued with
continual accusations of leftist sympathies and propagandistic
tendencies.  I
t was finally shut down in 1939 by the newly formed
House Un-American Activities Committee.
To work is to pray.
To pray is to work.
--St. Benedict
May is Labor History Month
Finest Moment in
Representation of
Catholic Social
Justice Teachings
--James T. Fisher
Book Tells Catholic Backstory of
1954 Movie,
On the Waterfront
In the famous 1954 movie On the Waterfront, starring
Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint, the actor Karl Malden
delivers a rousing speech to restless dockworkers known as
"Christ in the Shapeup."  Fordham University Professor
James T. Fisher has described it as one of the finest
moments in the representation of Catholic social justice
teachings.

Fisher is the author of
On the Irish Waterfront: The
Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York
.
In it, he tells the true story on which the movie was based.  
The famous speech was actually delivered on the Jersey
City waterfront in 1948 by the Rev. John M. "Pete"
Corridan.

Corridan was  a Jesuit priest attached to the Xavier Labor
School, located at the Church of St. Francis Xavier on
West 16th Street in Manhattan.  Although the movie is set in
Hoboken, New Jersey, the actual events took place in the
vicinity of the Chelsea Piers on Manhattan's west side.

Fisher's book refutes the thesis that
On the Waterfront was
a metaphor for anti-communism.  In fact, it was based on a
true story about organized crime's attempts to undermine
the labor movement and the Jesuits' efforts to resist.
"Christ in the
Shapeup"