Help support our next project.
We are delighted to let you know about an upcoming production of a new play that couldn't be more timely, and to request your support with a donation to help us bring this piece–many years in the making–to the stage in March 2025.
It CAN Happen Here!- Hallie Flanagan and the Federal Theatre Project was inspired by the work of Susan Quinn, who wrote a history of the Federal Theatre Project in 2008 which highlighted the contributions of this ground-breaking woman who had been all but lost to history. Susan and her husband Dan Jacobs reached out to New Perspectives Theatre Company more than 10 years ago with an early draft of the play. It has since gone through many revisions and has now taken form as a multimedia extravaganza, utilizing a wealth of material from the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) archive and the creative talents of a 5-person team who have brought the script to completion. Authors of the script are Melody Brooks, Katrin Hilbe, Tess Howsam, Dan Jacobs and Susan Quinn. Brooks is Producer, Hilbe is Director, Howsam is Production Designer.
Our goal is to raise $20,000 by february 15, which will supplement existing funds and ensure that our multimedia vision can be fully realized. All gifts are fully tax-deductible.
It CAN Happen Here! will perform at the Culture Lab LIC, 5-25 46th Ave, Long Island City, NY 11101. The performance schedule is March 6-30, 2025, Thursday-Saturday at 7:00pm; Sunday performance time are TBD. Tickets are $28; $20 for students and seniors (65+) with ID. Tickets will be available for purchase on Eventbrite by the end of January.
Scroll down and keep reading to learn more on why this production is important in the current moment.
How to Donate:
QR Code for Zelle:
By Check: made payable to New Perspectives Theatre Company, 456 West 37 Street, NY, NY 10018. Memo "It CAN Happen Here"
Donation Levels:
$25-100 will be listed on the play's webpage.
$101-250 will be listed on the webpage and in the playbill.
$251-$500 will be listed and receive a pair of tickets to any performance except opening night.
$501-1,000 will be listed and receive a pair of tickets to Opening Night, March 6th or any other performance.
Your support is critical to our ability to tell this story NOW.
There has always been a tension between telling the story of Hallie Flanagan’s heroic life, culminating in the theatrical achievements of the Federal Theater Project—a dazzling story of triumph over great personal adversity—and telling the dark story of ignorant and racist elements of American society which brought the theater down.
Our play tells both sides of the story. On the one hand, it is a joyful story of a rare four years in the 1930’s when the Federal Government combined forces with a visionary named Hallie Flanagan to bring theater to millions. It did happen here. And for sixteen evenings, at the Culture Lab in Queens, audiences will get a taste of the high spirits and artistry that the FTP brought to the American stage.
At the same time, It CAN Happen Here! tells the story of the reactionary forces of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), created by Martin Dies in 1938 which brought down the Federal Theater. That also happened here and it’s happening again.
The language and accusations of Congressional committee investigations in the last two years could have been lifted verbatim from Dies and the HUAC transcripts. The newly elected Administration is poised to take that even further, into the surreal realm of Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here–a wildly successful FTP production.
Given the state of things, it feels especially good now to celebrate that triumph along with Orson Welle's Voodoo Macbeth, T.S. Elliot's Murder in the Cathedral and the hundreds of performances that the FTP brought to all corners of the country.
But it also gives the HUAC story, 90 years later, a terrifying spin.