Between 1935 and 1939, the United States government paid out-of-work artists to write, act, and stage theatre as part of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), a New Deal job relief program. In segregated 'Negro Units' set up under the FTP, African American artists took on theatre work usually reserved for whites, staged black versions of 'white' classics, and developed radical new dramas. In this fresh history of the FTP Negro Units, Kate Dossett examines what she calls the black performance community - a broad network of actors, dramatists, audiences, critics, and community activists - who made and remade black theatre manuscripts for the Negro Units and other theatre companies from New York to Seattle.

Previously issued in print: 2020.

Leaping for freedom: black theatre manuscripts & black performance communities -- Our actors may become our emancipators: race and realism in Stevedore -- They love to watch us dance: exposing the mask in black living newspapers -- Wrestling with heroes: John Henry and Bigger Thomas from page to stage -- Garveyism, communism, gender trouble: Theodore Ward's Big white fog -- Free at lass!: plays that turn out well for Harlem -- Making space -- Black federal theatre manuscripts.