About the Show
Infinite Variety Productions (IVP) and The Bronx Music Hall present a live performance and recording of “The Arena,” a new documentary radio play based on Hallie Flanagan’s 1940 memoir Arena: The Story of the Federal Theatre.
In 1938, the Federal Theatre Project, a New Deal program that put thousands of out-of-work theater artists back to work, was brought before a closed congressional committee hearing that led to its shutdown. “The Arena” re-imagines that hearing as a series of vaudevillian sketches. Inside the dream of an out-of-work composer, the hearing room becomes an arena, part vaudeville stage, part gladiator pit, where the artists fight for their lives the only way they know how: by performing.
Written and directed by Ash Singer, with music by Shira Bouskila and choreography by Callie Mitchell. Audience members will be part of the live recording, followed by a post-show talkback.
