In its eight years of existence, the WPA changed the face of America. Hundreds of thousands of miles of road, innumerable public buildings, bridges, airports, and seaports – the very national infrastructure that we know today – was built by the WPA.  We're used to having accessible open spaces nearby because the WPA created so many public parks and recreational facilities.  The WPA's Federal Project Nmber One, including the Federal Arts Project, Federal Writers Project, Federal Theatre Project, and Federal Music Project fostered a greater appreciation for the arts and humanities through thousands of publicly accessible paintings, writings, plays, and music.  The Federal Writers project, along with the WPA's Historical Records Survey also captured living history, from the stories of migrant workers to the narratives of former slaves, and created interest in the preservation of historical records nationwide.

We live in a politically divisive time; our conversations about wealth, poverty, and the availability of opportunity are not unlike those of the 1930s.  Working for the common good feels like a quite uncommon occurence, and the very words "social justice" and "progressive agenda" strike fear in the hearts of some people.  Perhaps we can argue the politics and economics of the WPA; we can argue about its ultimate place in stimulating a recovery from the Great Depression.  But one thing remains indisputable, both in the historical record and in the stories collected by COSACOSA for the Spare A Dime project:  the WPA built the America we take for granted today.  And even more importantly, the WPA gave the country hope in a time of hopelessness. It offered opportunity – the possibility of a better life where there was none before – to millions of Americans.  It made us work together.

The paradigm
of Spare A Dime
finds parallels of place and time,
the mystery
of history
repeating, and we hope you'll see
true Liberty
finds unity
of purpose in community.
Rise or fall, we'll always be
together, indivisibly.

A big shout out and our deepest gratitude to the fantastic cast, musicians, and crew of Spare A Dime, and to all of the project's community participants.  You define the very essence of the power of art to transform lives.  Thank you.

For over a year, COSACOSA youth, artists, and staff have collected stories of the Great Depression and our current "Great Recession" from community residents citywide.  These interviews created the taproot of Spare A Dime, defining the project's characters and anchoring the storyline through their powerful interplay of hope and hopelessness in times of crisis.

This summer, thanks to the support from the Knight Arts Challenge, the Kresge Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Union Benevolent Association, and other generous funders, these collected stories will also find a home in a new series of Site and Sound Gardens we're is creating with community members in North Philadelphia. Transforming abandoned lots into "sacred" spaces for our city neighborhoods, the new Gardens join COSACOSA's existing Healing Garden.  The Gardens will feature two- and three-dimensional visual art plus temporary sound art exhibitions, including stories, songs, and poetry by neighborhood residents.  Visit COSACOSA's website, www.cosacosa.org, for upcoming dates and times to volunteer to help create and maintain the Site and Sound Gardens.  You can also read about the Gardens and other community-building efforts in the recently published Philadelphia edition of US Airways magazine!

Best of all, hear our collected stories as part of Spare A Dime on April 18, 19, and 20, 2013! 
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"The Works Progress Administration (WPA) has made a significant impact in my life, many years after its contributions were first presented," said vocalist Lourin Plant. "During the Great Depression, nearly 100,000 former slaves were still alive. The WPA, through its Federal Writers Project, recorded interviews with more than 2,400 former slaves about their life experiences under the institution of slavery. These recorded interviews and photographs, along with existing slave narratives, make up the largest body of writings by an enslaved people in the world. They record for us primary eyewitness accounts of the realities of slavery as an institution and the enormous humanity of African American people. As such, they are of paramount importance to our American story. They help open our continuing dialogue about slavery, freedom, and democracy. The WPA submissions help illuminate the resilient transcended soul at the center of the incomprehensibly stressful lives African-Americans struggled to carve out for themselves under the yoke of slavery. The WPA contributions are an indispensable part of our Nation’s history.”

Plant is playing the role of The Veteran in Spare A Dime, ironically following his recent appearance as a WWI soldier in Opera Philadelphia's production of Silent Night.  Plant appears as both countertenor and baritone throughout the country, performing with organizations including Opera Philadelphia (pictured), New York City Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Cincinnati May Festival, Dayton Opera, Amherst Early Music Festival, Northern Lights Music Festival, Philadelphia Classical Symphony, Philadelphia Ancient Voices, Voces Novae et Antiquae, Piffaro, Jim Thorpe Bach Festival, and in the touring ensembles of Michael Crawford, Russell Watkins, and Barbra Streisand.  Plant’s presentations on African-American spirituals have been featured in state, regional and international conferences, and his articles have appeared in Classical Singer Magazine and the National Association of Teachers of Singing Journal of Singing. His conducting, renaissance harp playing, solo and choral singing are featured on the recent CD “Magdalene and the Other Mary: Songs of Holy Women,” distributed by Church Music Publishing.  Plant holds a Bachelor of Music Education degree from Wittenberg University, Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in Choral Conducting from the College-Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati. He has served on the voice faculties of Sinclair College and Humboldt State University of California.  Now in the nineteenth year of his appointment at Rowan University, he has served as coordinator of the vocal/choral division, and conductor of the Rowan University Chamber and Concert Choirs, and Collegium Musicum (early music ensemble). His choirs have appeared throughout the region and three times at Carnegie Hall.

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In COSACOSA's Spare A Dime, the character of The Mother is facing eviction, based on a story told to us by a resident of Opportunities Tower senior living apartments in North Philadelphia.  During the Great Depression, her unemployed parents struggled to keep the family housed and under the same roof.  They resisted dividing up the children among other relatives and managed, against all odds and through all manner of odd jobs, to keep the family together.  The Mother's plight also resonates with so many stories we heard from folks living on the edge today.  As one North Philadelphia mother facing foreclosure said, "To be evicted on my own is frightening; to be evicted with my child is beyond what I can imagine. My mind just shuts down."

In the first half of the song cycle, the Mother sings Dimestore Lullaby as she puts her baby to bed.  More that just a simple "good night" wish for her child, the song expresses The Mother's desire to escape the overwhelming reality in which she finds herself.  In the second half of Spare A Dime, The Mother sings Indivisibly, a song about interconnectedness and our responsibility to each other.  Indivisibly merges, appropriately, with FDR's reprise of Life Turns on a Dime to end the show.

By the last census count, nearly 22% of America children live in poverty, disproportionate to 15% of Americans living in poverty overall.  In Philadelphia, the poverty rate is even higher and on the rise: nearly 40% of children now live in poverty, as do 28% of residents overall.  Although there are no governmental statistics on poverty in the Great Depression, just imagine how much worse it must have been with no social safety nets in place. 

Records do show that homelessness grew enormously during the Depression.  In 1931, public and private agencies had to provide emergency lodgings for over 1 million people.  By 1933, over 4.3 million people were in emergency shelters.  (Each night in America today, over 600,000 people are still homeless.) The New Deal shifted much of the responsibility for providing for people in crisis and living in poverty to the federal government. 

We've now posted about all the Spare A Dime individual characters, but there is one other presence that plays an important part in our production: The Chorus of Liberty!  Tune in tomorrow to learn more -- and to hear more, get your tickets to Spare A Dime at PIFA 13 today!

WWI and the roaring 20s brought increased demand for American grain worldwide.  The government encouraged farmers to grow more and expand their land holdings.  With food prices on the rise, they willingly complied, taking out large mortgages for new land and new equipment.  Even when, after the other nations of the world recovered from the war and were able to grow their own food, grain prices fell, American farmers continued to borrow money; credit was easily had.  Once the Depression came, farm foreclosures became everyday events.  In the Midwest, the farmers' dire economic situation was exacerbated by the Dust Bowl.  

FDR's New Deal attempted to remedy these problems through multiple programs.  The WPA provided jobs for those who had lost their lands.  The Civilian Conservation Corps restored farm lands devastated by dust storms.  The Farm Security Administration experimented with resettling sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and submarginal landowners into group farms on viable lands. 

Those farmers who were able to retain ownership of their land survived the Great Depression growing their own food and trading goods for other supplies they needed, like our Spare A Dime character The Farmer. Our Farmer survives on hard work and hope.  She sings about those two essential qualities of American life in Promised Land, (the duet with The Immigrant described yesterday).  In the second half of Spare A Dime, she sings Voices Raised, an anthem to both individual rights and mutual aid.  The Farmer is based on Director/Composer Kimberly Niemela's paternal grandmother, a first generation American who raised ten children on a Pennsylvania farm during the Great Depression.  She is also an homage to Philadelphia's determined urban growers, especially those in COSACOSA's partner communities of Passyunk Square and Nicetown-Tioga.  As one North Philly elder told us, "You have to nurture hope just like seed for it to become what it's supposed to be."  Join us at PIFA 13 and help nurture the hopes of communities all over our city!

Tomorrow's post is our final character profile: The Mother!

Before the start of the Great Depression, many laws had been passed barring certain ethnic groups from coming to the United States.  The deepening economic collapse tightened the flow of immigration to almost a standstill.  During the 1930s even refugees from Nazi persecution were restricted from entering the country through ethnic quotas.  Asians were blocked entirely.  Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Mexican Americans were "repatriated."  Anti-immigrant sentiment was widespread.

In COSACOSA's Spare A Dime, the character of The Immigrant raises questions about the sustainability of the American dream, singing of "promises made, promises broken" in Promised Land, a duet with The Farmer.  The song uses two of FDR's "four freedoms" -- freedom from fear and freedom from want -- to describe democracy and possible paths to prosperity for both our characters and the nation.  In the second part of the song cycle, The Immigrant is now employed by the WPA's Federal Project Number One. He documents the era by "seeing the world through another's eyes," as described in his song Changing Places.

The Immigrant character is based in histories recorded by Federal One during the Depression and in a multiplicity of stories collected from COSACOSA constituents all over the city today, especially neighbors in South Philadelphia, were we work with first generation Americans of over thirty different nationalities.  No matter where in the world their country of origin, their goal for life in the U.S. remains the same.  As one youth explained, "a chance for peace and for a better life is all we need..."  Experience even more perspectives by joining us at PIFA 13!  Buy your tickets today!

Tomorrow's character post?  The Farmer!

The Veteran character in COSACOSA's Spare A Dime was a soldier in World War I and a member of the Bonus Army expedition occupying Washington, D.C. at the start of the Great Depression.  Several weeks ago we did a comprehensive series of posts about the Bonus Army, how their camp was dismantled and burned by President Hoover, General MacArthur, and then-Major Patton (the last two our hero generals of WWII) in a sad and stunning (and now nearly forgotten) betrayal of those who had served the nation.

Our character's story is grounded in these episodes, and in the first half of the song cycle, he sings Hand to Hand, a rousing George M. Cohan-esque number reframing the story of the Bonus Army in terms of American idealism and The Veteran's hopes for the nation -- and himself.  As one unemployed veteran of America's 21st century wars told us, "Service and duty made me join the Army; those are the same values I want for my life now that I'm a civilian again."

Like many of the veterans of the Bonus Army campaign, our character joined the specially created Civilian Conservation Corps units created by FDR to provide work for jobless WWI vets.  In the second half of Spare A Dime, The Veteran sings Citizen Conservation, wittily imparting insights from his experiences at war and at peace, while honoring nature and his new life of service.  What wisdom will he share?  Come to the World Premiere of Spare A Dime at PIFA 13 and find out!

Tomorrow's post is our weekly "this week in 1935" feature; a thrifty recipe from the 1930s will follow on Menu Monday.  Mid-next week, our Spare A Dime character profiles continue with The Immigrant!

In COSCOSA's Spare A Dime, the character of The Builder is an unemployed construction worker who finds a job with the WPA. Although the New Deal’s main aim was to raise millions out of poverty, many of its programs focused on upgrading the country's aged and failing infrastructure, as well.  Unpaved roads, unstable bridges, and ancient sewage systems threatened the progress of the 20th century.  FDR also wanted to conserve natural resources depleted by erosion and national parks threatened by deforestation. 

WPA job programs focused on developing solutions to all these problems and more: thousands of new civic structures were built across the nation.  New hospitals, airports, and schools (like Bok Tech, our performance venue for Spare A Dime) benefited the larger community, as well as the workers that the WPA employed to build them.

The Builder's story is based on a local history provided to us by a resident of White Horse Village senior living community.  Her out-of-work father found a job with the WPA, learning the construction skills he used for the rest of his life to support himself and his family. The character's plight also resonates with many of the stories we've collected from unemployed workers in the Great Recession, in particular the tale of a contractor we met in Philadelphia's Roxborough neighborhood.  He wondered where to find "just a bit of hope."  In the first half of the song cycle, The Builder sings Foundation of Hope, asking just that question of the audience.  After intermission, the character sings an affectionate duet, Change in the Making, with The Merchant, as described yesterday.  Who or what is the object of his admiration?  Come to PIFA 13 and find out! 

Tomorrow's character post?  The Veteran!