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Faber Faber The Playbook A Story of Theatre, Democracy and the Making of a Culture War.
1935. As part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's progressive New Deal, the Work Progress Administration is created to support unemployed workers, including writers, artists, musicians and actors. The Federal Theatre Project, a major part of that programme, begins to stage critically acclaimed, subsidised and groundbreaking productions across America, including Orson Welles's directorial debut, a landmark modern dance programme and shows that sought to tell the truth about racism, inequality and the dangers of fascism.
1938. An opportunistic Texas congressman, Martin Dies, head of the newly formed House Un-American Activities Committee, successfully targets the Federal Theatre, exploiting rising tensions over communism and creating a new political playbook based on sensationalism, misinformation and fear—a playbook that has proved instrumental in our current culture wars.
From one of the world's great storytellers, The Playbook is an invigorating re-enactment of a terrifyingly prescient moment in twentieth-century American cultural history.
PLEASE When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
1938. An opportunistic Texas congressman, Martin Dies, head of the newly formed House Un-American Activities Committee, successfully targets the Federal Theatre, exploiting rising tensions over communism and creating a new political playbook based on sensationalism, misinformation and fear—a playbook that has proved instrumental in our current culture wars.
From one of the world's great storytellers, The Playbook is an invigorating re-enactment of a terrifyingly prescient moment in twentieth-century American cultural history.
PLEASE When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
384 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2024
45 people are currently reading
3068 people want to read
About the author
James Shapiro
21 books202 followersA specialist in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period, James S. Shapiro is Larry Miller Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1985. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Public Library Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and the American Academy in Berlin. In 2011, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He currently serves as a Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at the Public Theater in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
May 12, 2025
THANK YOU james shapiro, without whose bibliographical essay I might never have been able to write a mediocre history paper, and would have, instead, written a fairly bad one.
October 26, 2024
lwk did skim most of it because it was for class. i also don’t like the class i read it for which may have influenced my rating. but if i’m being honest i just didn’t really like the writing style.
Read
July 4, 2024Read for my summer reading bingo challenge for book in the 700s square
August 28, 2025
An exceptionally well-researched survey of a time in American history all too reminiscent of our own. I had never heard of Martin Dies or the Federal Theater Project before reading this, but Shapiro's clarity and appropriately acerbic tone was enough to make even summaries of House hearings interesting. Admittedly found the second half a bit dry (might also have just been me reading this during early morning commutes), but the epilogue was enough to reel me back in. Shakespeare scholarship is really where he shines, but I'd read anything by Shapiro at this point to be honest (and plan on doing so with his previous books).
(When a book has a bibliographical essay as long as a chapter in its own right, you know you're in good hands.)
(When a book has a bibliographical essay as long as a chapter in its own right, you know you're in good hands.)
January 16, 2025
The chapter on the Federal Theatre’s production(s) of “It Could Happen Here” alone makes this a worthwhile read.
December 16, 2024
His breadth is amazing. This is nothing at all like 1599 or 1606. He has chosen a House investigatory committee during the New Deal. Leaves me astonished that Martin Dies is not a name written in infamy through my education. His committee destroyed the WPA's federal theatre, which (regrettably unknown to me) included among other things the first play directed by Orson Welles (so-called "Voodoo Hamlet" staged in Harlem) and It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. If you're living in the 21st century astonished that in fact it CAN happen here, it will give you no solace to learn that all of this has happened before. Of course -- because Shapiro is a Shakespeare scholar it is fine with him for the book to be tragic from the first page to the last.
December 19, 2024
Long story short; White Christian Nationalism ruins everything.
June 23, 2024
3.5 stars … I particularly enjoyed the (shiver-inducing) political history.
July 7, 2024
Orson Wells , in a late career interview, stated his great achievement was staging the play Macbeth in Harlem in 1937. Spotlighting an all black cast with a Haitian 1800s retelling of the Bard's play, the city of Harlem, still shaken from riots and a racial unrest in the prior year, would be
gridlocked for five blocks on opening nights. Not without controversary, then or now, Wells dicatorial style and the judging eye of white audiences revealed as much on the stage as in the rafthers. And yet, Shapiro writes, this production "struck a nerve". It confronted playgoers and the culture at large with questions about what happens when Black actors play Shakespeare (p.75).
The remarkable run of Well's "Macbeth", or a thousand other productions would not be possible without the financial backing from the New Deal initaitve of the National Theatre. James Shapiro tells the story of the short lived National Theatre, a program within the WPA, and the early culture that manifested. We navigate between the theater of the politicans and the actors, sometimes with equally dramatic effect. Conservatives rallied under Martin Dies, with the Dies Committee, and through redbaiting and dishonest framing, would tare and feather the National Theatre as a contagion of communist thought.
Shapiro's riveting Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future highlighted Shakespeare plays that caused great controversary, but here centers on productions from the National Theatre from 1935-1939. They include multi-city stages of Sinclar Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here" a scorching anti-fascist piece; "How Long Brethren: A Radical Dance" a negro song and dance of protest (p.108); and "One Third of a Nation" that focused on the tenement housing crises of poverty and health.
Audaciously, these plays and performances allowed black and white performers and audiences to interact that were far ahead of their time - the civil rights era would be thirty years later. With the dance "How Long Brethen, Shapiro writes "it forced critics to confront their own prejudices and consider whether white dancers were capable of embodying black experience (p.129). Further Shapiro considers that it's hard not to wince about audience reactions , given the assumptive racism and white supremacy of the culture. And ironically, thouh the intentions were largely positive, audiences today may be unsettled by white performers taking on these performers - considering the idea of cultural appropriation.
Chillingly, the reactionary anti-Roosevelt senators like Martin Dies, would weaponize the empathy and transformative nature of theater as a threat to the American way of life, as they understood it. Hallie Flangan, who led the National Theatre, would be bullied and humiliated by those willing to twist motives and narratives for their self-interest. The historial echoes are in the 1950s "Red Scare" with the McCarthy witchhunts, or in the expansive book bans of our decade against LGBT or anti-conservative ideas. Despite the unfair treatmetn she receieved, Flanagan's words to the embittered committee demonstrate why the arts are vital. "Unlike any art for existing in America today, the workers' theatres intend to shape the life of this country, socially, poltically and industrially (p.11).
Shapiro reminds us progressive actions impacted many Americans through financial safeguards like retriement and unemployment insurance, but it also financially invested in our creative class. With sponsoring by the government, storytellers could share their craft, showing us who we were and who we could be.
gridlocked for five blocks on opening nights. Not without controversary, then or now, Wells dicatorial style and the judging eye of white audiences revealed as much on the stage as in the rafthers. And yet, Shapiro writes, this production "struck a nerve". It confronted playgoers and the culture at large with questions about what happens when Black actors play Shakespeare (p.75).
The remarkable run of Well's "Macbeth", or a thousand other productions would not be possible without the financial backing from the New Deal initaitve of the National Theatre. James Shapiro tells the story of the short lived National Theatre, a program within the WPA, and the early culture that manifested. We navigate between the theater of the politicans and the actors, sometimes with equally dramatic effect. Conservatives rallied under Martin Dies, with the Dies Committee, and through redbaiting and dishonest framing, would tare and feather the National Theatre as a contagion of communist thought.
Shapiro's riveting Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us about Our Past and Future highlighted Shakespeare plays that caused great controversary, but here centers on productions from the National Theatre from 1935-1939. They include multi-city stages of Sinclar Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here" a scorching anti-fascist piece; "How Long Brethren: A Radical Dance" a negro song and dance of protest (p.108); and "One Third of a Nation" that focused on the tenement housing crises of poverty and health.
Audaciously, these plays and performances allowed black and white performers and audiences to interact that were far ahead of their time - the civil rights era would be thirty years later. With the dance "How Long Brethen, Shapiro writes "it forced critics to confront their own prejudices and consider whether white dancers were capable of embodying black experience (p.129). Further Shapiro considers that it's hard not to wince about audience reactions , given the assumptive racism and white supremacy of the culture. And ironically, thouh the intentions were largely positive, audiences today may be unsettled by white performers taking on these performers - considering the idea of cultural appropriation.
Chillingly, the reactionary anti-Roosevelt senators like Martin Dies, would weaponize the empathy and transformative nature of theater as a threat to the American way of life, as they understood it. Hallie Flangan, who led the National Theatre, would be bullied and humiliated by those willing to twist motives and narratives for their self-interest. The historial echoes are in the 1950s "Red Scare" with the McCarthy witchhunts, or in the expansive book bans of our decade against LGBT or anti-conservative ideas. Despite the unfair treatmetn she receieved, Flanagan's words to the embittered committee demonstrate why the arts are vital. "Unlike any art for existing in America today, the workers' theatres intend to shape the life of this country, socially, poltically and industrially (p.11).
Shapiro reminds us progressive actions impacted many Americans through financial safeguards like retriement and unemployment insurance, but it also financially invested in our creative class. With sponsoring by the government, storytellers could share their craft, showing us who we were and who we could be.
September 18, 2024
The Playbook is the story of the Federal Theater Project , a short-lived WPA project designed to employ a variety of theater professionals(from actors, directors, and playwrights to all sorts of crew and technicians) during the Depression. Freedom of speech was an important concept to this group; in implementing its mission, it ran up against Texas Congressman Martin Dies, a rabid racist and anti-Communist and the original House Un-American Activities Committee. The Committee engineered the cancellation of the program after 4 years of existence.
Shapiro discusses the origins and creation of the program,which employed more than 12,000 artists (including such later luminaries as Orson Welles and Arthur Miller) and the selection of its director, Vassar drama professor Hallie Flanagan, then details several examples of its projects, notable for what seemed to the committee to be extreme political -- often "communistic" -- content. The creation of the Un-American Activities Committee and the selection of the relatively unknown but extremely ambitious Dies as its chairman. Dies chose to make an example of Flanagan, whom he considered a Communist, and the Theater Project to create early publicity and a victory for the committee -- sort of an early Oppenheimer/McCarty situation. The book is well-written and thoroughly researched; the discussions of the projects are interesting , and the discussions of the committee process enlightening and a bit disturbing. An interesting read about an almost unknown subject.
Shapiro discusses the origins and creation of the program,which employed more than 12,000 artists (including such later luminaries as Orson Welles and Arthur Miller) and the selection of its director, Vassar drama professor Hallie Flanagan, then details several examples of its projects, notable for what seemed to the committee to be extreme political -- often "communistic" -- content. The creation of the Un-American Activities Committee and the selection of the relatively unknown but extremely ambitious Dies as its chairman. Dies chose to make an example of Flanagan, whom he considered a Communist, and the Theater Project to create early publicity and a victory for the committee -- sort of an early Oppenheimer/McCarty situation. The book is well-written and thoroughly researched; the discussions of the projects are interesting , and the discussions of the committee process enlightening and a bit disturbing. An interesting read about an almost unknown subject.
May 30, 2024
I consider Shapiro the most readable of the Shakespearean scholars with popular book contracts. After he edited the Library of America volume “Shakespeare in America,” his books have illuminated focus on how Shakespeare (and by extension the arts) are in dialogue with the culture surrounding them. This book, in many ways, seems like a companion to the much superior “Shakespeare in a Divided America.” The first part of the book details the formation of the New Deal-era WPA program the Federal Theatre Project, its struggles to operate and includes accounts of its most famous successes, notably Orson Welles’ so-called “Voodoo Macbeth.” Where the book picks up steam is when it details the persistent and ongoing tension between acceptance of public funds and artistic freedom. When some of the most popular shows highlighted social injustice and, in some cases, were openly critical of the Congress whose funds the programs depended, the WPA proved to be low-hanging fruit to dismantle first when New Deal programs started to become unpopular. The Dies Committee was established to expose the supposed communist influences in the Federal Theatre, and Shapiro argues that the attacks on the Federal Theatre Project were a precursor to Joseph McCarthy in the near future and a playbook of how to attack public arts funding to this day.
September 12, 2025
Book Review – The Playbook by James Shapiro
James Shapiro’s The Playbook explores the Federal Theatre Project, a New Deal program created to give artists work during the Great Depression. The opening chapters clearly cover the program’s formation and the government scrutiny it faced, including oversight by the House Committee.
After that, the book focuses on a handful of productions, many dealing with racial representation and casting controversies. While these stories are interesting, they dominate the narrative. My main issue isn’t the content itself, but the layout. I feel the author could have integrated the political and historical context throughout the discussion of the productions, rather than separating them into different sections. This would have made the narrative feel more cohesive and easier to follow.
I expected a broader history showing how racial issues, program administration, and political conflicts intersected across the WPA theater program. I noticed that the case studies reveal important tensions in the theater of the era, but they don’t give a full picture of the program overall. I feel the book is engaging and well-researched, but it falls short of the comprehensive history I was hoping for. Readers interested in specific productions and challenges of representation will find value, but those seeking a complete overview may be left wanting more.
James Shapiro’s The Playbook explores the Federal Theatre Project, a New Deal program created to give artists work during the Great Depression. The opening chapters clearly cover the program’s formation and the government scrutiny it faced, including oversight by the House Committee.
After that, the book focuses on a handful of productions, many dealing with racial representation and casting controversies. While these stories are interesting, they dominate the narrative. My main issue isn’t the content itself, but the layout. I feel the author could have integrated the political and historical context throughout the discussion of the productions, rather than separating them into different sections. This would have made the narrative feel more cohesive and easier to follow.
I expected a broader history showing how racial issues, program administration, and political conflicts intersected across the WPA theater program. I noticed that the case studies reveal important tensions in the theater of the era, but they don’t give a full picture of the program overall. I feel the book is engaging and well-researched, but it falls short of the comprehensive history I was hoping for. Readers interested in specific productions and challenges of representation will find value, but those seeking a complete overview may be left wanting more.
August 9, 2024
Imagine a world in which there is a federally funded theatre that provides work to hundreds of theatre folk across 29 states. A theatre that provides groundbreaking productions of classic and newly written scripts, with plotlines about racism, health care, labor practices and the need to fight fascism.
This world actually existed between 1935 and 1939, as part of the New Deal. It was eventually ridiculed, lied about and destroyed by a House Un-American Activities Committee, which used the word “communistic” to condemn anything its members didn’t like – especially “race mixing.”
Shapiro’s book tells of the birth and rise of the Federal Theatre, its struggles, successes and internal workings. He also details the rise of the odious Martin Dies who sought for years to craft something that would give him power and found it in the creation of a committee that was a forerunner of the McCarthyism of the 1950s.
But the far-right hostility to arts, culture and equality is alive and well today. It is all around us – and reading this book is a way to make you see just how insidious these efforts to damage America were – and are.
This world actually existed between 1935 and 1939, as part of the New Deal. It was eventually ridiculed, lied about and destroyed by a House Un-American Activities Committee, which used the word “communistic” to condemn anything its members didn’t like – especially “race mixing.”
Shapiro’s book tells of the birth and rise of the Federal Theatre, its struggles, successes and internal workings. He also details the rise of the odious Martin Dies who sought for years to craft something that would give him power and found it in the creation of a committee that was a forerunner of the McCarthyism of the 1950s.
But the far-right hostility to arts, culture and equality is alive and well today. It is all around us – and reading this book is a way to make you see just how insidious these efforts to damage America were – and are.
May 30, 2024
Very good book. Glad that I assigned it as summer reading for both my AP US History and AP US government classes as it offers a case study in the American culture wars. Shapiro brings to life the controversial productions of Macbeth (set in Haiti), Power, A Trojan Incident, It Can't Happen Here, and One Third of a Nation among others. He describes the prejudices that were weaponized by the Dies Committee (which in one form or another lasted until 1975) and the self-inflicted wounds which the Federal Theatre Project brought upon itself. Ironic that fascism escaped the notice of the committee but communism proved to be the bugaboo that generated press headlines as anti-New Deal resistance gathered steam before the outbreak of WWII. Shapiro does a very good job of relating this sad chapter in American history to present day contested discourse about wokeness and anti-American progressive/elitist bias. I say sad chapter but as Shapiro points out over a thousand productions in 29 states were seen by 30 milion Americans (one in four , two thirds of whom had never seen a play.
August 17, 2024
I had no idea that such a program existed as a part of the WPA back in the day and that it was shut down by the same McCarthyites who saw communists in every shadow back in the 1950s. This quote goes a long way toward explaining the history covered in the book: “The health of democracy and theater, twin born in ancient Greece, have always been mutually dependent.”
I didn't read the whole book, but I particularly recommend the preface which, in eight pages, lays the groundwork for the beginnings of the culture wars, whereby the wealthy have tricked the religious into believing that it's not in their interest to publicly finance art and culture.
I suppose they figure that, the more we plebians think about it, the more we will realize that we are being taken advantage of by those who want to claim the largest portions of the pie. But we can fight back! Start by reading this book.
I didn't read the whole book, but I particularly recommend the preface which, in eight pages, lays the groundwork for the beginnings of the culture wars, whereby the wealthy have tricked the religious into believing that it's not in their interest to publicly finance art and culture.
I suppose they figure that, the more we plebians think about it, the more we will realize that we are being taken advantage of by those who want to claim the largest portions of the pie. But we can fight back! Start by reading this book.
July 22, 2024
I think James Shapiro books are easy to read. From the front flap. In 1939 The Federal Theater Project (part of the WPA) staged more than 1000 plays seen by 30 million people in this country... that's nearly 1 in 4 American, 2/3 of which had never seen a play before; and employed over 12,ooo workers. Congressman Dies stepped up, claiming it to be promoting "unAmerican" activities, including communism and intermingling of the races. The strategies used to destroy the Federal Theater Project were duplicated in the 1950's McCarthy trials, and have been carried forward to 2000's political theater of our presidential elections.
November 6, 2025
An eerie analysis of the WPA theater arts project during the first years of FDR’s effort to salvage the country from the Depression by providing genuine and creative employment to those in need of such work. After presenting detailed accounts of a few such theatrical productions, we learn how these efforts were opposed by American racists, American Nazis, and politicians who identified such state sponsored programs with socialism,miscegenation, anti-Aryan sentiment, and communism. Sound familiar?
July 14, 2024
An exceptional history
Shapiro has proven himself to be an outstanding scholar of Shakespeare and in his last two books - including this one - of American history too. In a lucid, compelling and well documented narrative he guides the reader through a fascinating but dreary episode of our past and draws a distinct connection between it and the current precipice on which the US stands.
Shapiro has proven himself to be an outstanding scholar of Shakespeare and in his last two books - including this one - of American history too. In a lucid, compelling and well documented narrative he guides the reader through a fascinating but dreary episode of our past and draws a distinct connection between it and the current precipice on which the US stands.
October 1, 2024
This dry history of the Federal Theatre Project (1935-1939) could have been so much more if it had taken the last part of its subtitle ("The Making of a Culture War") more to heart. The last quarter of the book does a formidable job of connecting the dots between today's 21st century Republican bigots, those from the first half of the 20th & both cohorts' phony moral outrage over all things non-white. I just wish it would have been more thoroughly woven throughout.
June 8, 2025
This "who knew?" history is an excellent companion to Red Scare, as it covers the story of the Dies committee (predecessor to McCarthy's shenanigans) and how it destroyed the WPA's Federal Theater Project. Who knew that the US had such a theater-going culture before the movies were invented? Who knew that the WPA as trying to revive that, as well as furthering the larger social goals of the New Deal? And sadly, who knew that today's Republican extremists and Trumpists had such deep, deep roots?
August 21, 2025
I realized after I started this that Shapiro had written an article on Shakespeare that I had to lead discussion on in one of my grad school theory classes. Was pleased to make this connection as he has an immensely readable style, especially for an academic. I’ve been intrigued by the New Deal and the 1930s for awhile, and this gave me a nice glimpse and ideas on where to dig in further. I might have enjoyed this a bit more with a more chronological approach, but still worked well for me!
August 12, 2024
The history of the brief but very successflul New Deal’s WPA’s Federal Theater Project, and its killing off, accomplished by the Dies Unamerican Committee in July, 1939.
The current culture wars are taking the model of Dies work to attack worksof art at the present time. A continuum from Martin Dies to the present Right Wing.
The current culture wars are taking the model of Dies work to attack worksof art at the present time. A continuum from Martin Dies to the present Right Wing.
October 24, 2024
Depressing finale, but the descriptions of the staging the various regional productions of It Can't Happen Here (including the brilliant but vetoed ideas of having ushers dress as Corpos and distributing Doremus Jessup's underground newsletter as handbills at intermission) and the equally scathing original scenes of the never-staged Liberty Deferred are worth the price of admission.
February 27, 2025
Compelling (and sometimes dry) read about the WPA and the rise of the House Unamerican Activities Committee. Interesting for theater buffs and history buffs, but not much here for the general reader. Author Shapiro does clear up conflicting stories about Wells' Voodoo Macbeth, but the rest might seem a bit of a slog for the casual reader.
June 10, 2025
This account of the Federal Theater project does more to revitalize the subject than most accounts I've read, including an atypical de-lionizing of figures like John Houseman and Orson Welles. If any of the current cultural discourse concerns you, replace "NEA/NPR/PBS/university" with "theater" and prepare to be struck by how little things have changed since the 1930s.
November 7, 2025
I did lose attention to the book at times; however, overall, it was worthwhile to learn all that went on just to have a federally-funded theater in the U.S. So much of the outrageous is happening today that, in some ways, gives one encouragement that we will all get through this. It is unfortunate though that it repeats itself.
December 21, 2025
A timely review of the history of right-wing fear mongering against the arts in America. If you extracted the names and dates, you'd be forgiven for thinking this book catalogues events that happened yesterday, instead of nearly a century ago.
Unfortunately the writing style makes it for a laborious read with a hyper focus on names and titles in run-on sentences.
Unfortunately the writing style makes it for a laborious read with a hyper focus on names and titles in run-on sentences.
January 3, 2026
An interesting read about a topic I didn't know anything about. It shows how far FDR's New Deal policies reached and tried to make a difference to society during the depression. Really evident where the culture wars of today found their inspiration. Enjoyed it but wish there was less detail about some of the plays and more about the politics, but that's just personal opinion. ⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️
August 10, 2024
Everyone should read this book! Especially theater educators, students, and professionals. James Shapiro poignantly retraces the path of the Federal Theatre Project and foreshadows our current culture war. Fantastic read!
September 3, 2024
A look at the divisive, corrosive political era that sprung up against FDR’s economic/safety net policies, but seen through the lens of the creative/theatre class.
During the depression, the WPA program aimed to support out of work actors, directors, stagehands by putting them to work staging plays etc. Hallie Flanagan, drama professor at Vassar spearheaded a national program of plays that would travel the country. Some of the plays would feature black talent, which put this national program in the sights of racist lawmakers.
This terrible era of our history would have been almost unbelievable to me just a decade ago. Today I see how wrong I was. This awful, jealous racism is in the zeitgeist once again. If you give them half a chance people you thought you knew can turn out to be ugly and mean. So distressing.
I have hopes however in reading these accounts that history can teach us to be better by avoiding the mistakes of the past. Fingers crossed.
All in all, very informative.
During the depression, the WPA program aimed to support out of work actors, directors, stagehands by putting them to work staging plays etc. Hallie Flanagan, drama professor at Vassar spearheaded a national program of plays that would travel the country. Some of the plays would feature black talent, which put this national program in the sights of racist lawmakers.
This terrible era of our history would have been almost unbelievable to me just a decade ago. Today I see how wrong I was. This awful, jealous racism is in the zeitgeist once again. If you give them half a chance people you thought you knew can turn out to be ugly and mean. So distressing.
I have hopes however in reading these accounts that history can teach us to be better by avoiding the mistakes of the past. Fingers crossed.
All in all, very informative.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews