“Journey Up Seventh Avenue to Infamy: The Cradle Will Rock”

Abstract

One historically consequential event of the Federal Theatre Project was the headline-grabbing opening night of Mark Blitzstein’s labor opera The Cradle Will Rock. The deeply satirical work examined greed and corruption, and the Works Progress Administration canceled it for fear it was too politically radical. Director Orson Welles and producer John Houseman felt the stakes were too high to not push back against this censorship and performed it elsewhere that night.

Keywords

• labor opera
• unions
• Federal Theatre Project
• censorship
• The Cradle Will Rock