Thinking is a threat to the powers-that-be

On the demise of the WPA's theatre program, author Susan Quinn wrote:

"...for a brief period of time in our history, Americans had a vibrant national theatre almost by accident. What began as a relief project, without big names or one grand theatre, found a vast new audience, ready to laugh and cry and cheer and hiss and even, dangerously, to think."

--from Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times, 2008.

(WPA poster, promoting the Federal Theatre production "One Third of a Nation," a play that highlighted poor housing conditions. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)