Susan Glaspell

Oh, Hallie, it is so nice to see you. I do appreciate you taking the time to travel to Chicago to meet with me in person. I hope the train ride was pleasant enough? I know you are busy, so I will get straight to the point. Hallie, you know that I support you and that I support the ideals of the Federal Theatre Project. You also know me to be a woman of conviction and principles driven by a desire to support the work of theatre artists in creating new and exciting plays. Despite the intolerable Chicago critics and their conspiratorial nature to sabotage any work associated with the FTP, we have succeeded here in winning the hearts of our audiences and bringing to the stage some of the most important work of this project. It’s absolutely ridiculous, that any seemingly positive review in the press is punctuated with “considering the source.” Utterly absurd, and you know that I offered on more than one occasion to go to war with these critics in the press, using my most effective weapon – my pen. When you invited me to Chicago, to take the leadership role in the Midwest New Play Bureau, I was so excited. Perhaps by the prospect of rekindling some of the joy I once found working in the Little Theatre with my dear Jig. But, when I arrived here in Chicago, the office was an utter mess – just shy of disaster.

You had 283 vaudevillians on the pay role, doing very few actual performances; leased theatres sitting empty to the tune of several thousands of dollars each month, and bureaucrats insisting on my first arrival that I dramatize “Gone With the Wind.” The fools were only interested in auditioning plays with Broadway appeal. Well, Chicago is not Broadway, nor should it wish to be. I worked to seek out Midwest plays that dealt with Midwestern interests, written by Midwest playwrights. By all accounts my tenure has been a success. But it isn’t enough.

Hallie, between my health and the numerous obstacles I keep encountering, I simply do not have the strength to keep fighting. Fighting for the playwrights, the directors, the very individuals who are at the heart of the important works we are creating. I realize fully the financial circumstances and constraints that you are working with, but these folks are spending many more hours of their lives than they are being fairly compensated for. Is it too much to ask that they maintain the rights to their own work? These artists have given so much, why is it out of the question to allow them their own words? Writing is a profession, and if we are not going to stage the plays that are written, why shouldn’t the playwright be afforded the opportunity to have their work produced or printed elsewhere? I simply cannot understand this matter and I have addressed it to you on multiple occasions. I’m tired. I don’t have the spirit to continue fighting. These two years have been difficult, inspiring, wonderful, challenging, lifesaving for me. It is time for me to move on. Hallie, I am resigning from my post.

When I began this journey, it was with the heart of an idealist. I still believe in the promise of a strong National Theatre and so it is my deepest hope that this dream will be realized. In ‘35, Uncle Sam went into the show business because people were hungry. He stayed in the business because it has been discovered that people were not only hungry for food, Hallie – they were hungry for theatre.