Plays, production, and politics: The Lincoln Legend of dramatic literature and performance as staged during FDR's second presidential term by the Federal Theatre Project and the Playwrights' Producing Company

Plays, Production, and Politics is about how during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's second presidential term the Federal Theatre Project and Playwrights' Producing Company deployed the social relevance of the Lincoln Legend of dramatic literature and live performance, extending a spirit of democratic morality both domestically and abroad. Chapter One explicates the historiographic framework for the entire study. Chapter Two transcends essentialist claims about FDR's global image through a study of editorial cartoons of the day. It also illustrates how socio-political minutiae supported the translation of prevailing presidential rhetoric to the Broadway stage by way of Kaufman and Hart's success, I'd Rather be Right. Within Chapter Three I propose a genealogy of the Lincoln Legend of dramatic literature, discerning the performative identity paradigm in place just prior to 1936. With this chapter, I am interested in how Abraham Lincoln is rendered as a dramatic character, enacting both culture and community. Using details of each organization's history and involvement with the production process, the next two chapters detail pertinent junctures of social, political, and aesthetic concerns. Chapter Four explores how the Lincoln Legend was employed to negotiate local politics, regional issues, and national policy. Chapter Five purports that the potential social efficacy of this particular Lincoln Legend production was due in large part to the intertextuality of Robert Sherwood's public and private spheres with Roosevelt's legislative agenda, and global uneasiness over the actions of Hitler and Mussolini. Plays, Production, and Politics concludes with Chapter Six.;Ultimately, this dissertation attends to the emergence of a performative Lincoln Legend aesthetic in United States theatre during Roosevelt's second presidential term. In doing so, I will fill a gap in research into not only Depression Era United States theatre but also Lincoln Studies as well.