The second character who appears on the Spare A Dime stage is The Merchant, owner of a local Five & Dime (the dollar stores of their day).  The concept of dimestores, or variety stores as they were later called, originated with Woolworth's in the late 19th century.  Prior to the Woolworth brothers' success, no one believed that having an entire store selling only low-cost goods could be a sustainable model.  By the 1930s, over a dozen major dimestore retailers thrived the U.S., in addition to numerous "mom and pop" operations, like that of our Spare A Dime singer.  Much of the storyline of the performance takes place around her dimestore.

The Merchant's story is a combination of two real-life tales close to COSACOSA Director and Spare A Dime composer Kimberly Niemela's heart, that of a corner store owner near to our North Philadelphia Healing Garden (where we often purchase supplies and snacks), and that of her own maternal grandmother who ran a corner grocery store during the Great Depression.  Ironically, in the late 1930s, her grandmother's store became the local headquarters for the WPA, both because it was a central community location, and it had a little something extra that was hard to find at the time:  a telephone.

In Spare A Dime's first act,  The Merchant character sings Pocket of Blues, a song that tells the story of the stock market crash and its aftermath, and how we are all financially interconnected (whether we like it or not).  The title of the song functions as a double metaphor -- for an empty wallet and for those folks who are perceived, at first, as societal "takers."  The Merchant herself is funny and forthright about dispensing advice as well as merchandise, and she may use some sight gags in order to make her point to the audience.  In the second half of the cycle, The Merchant sings Change in the Making,  a poignant duet celebrating new-found love...ah, but of whom or of what?  You'll have to get tickets to our PIFA 13 performance to find out!

Tomorrow's character post?  The Builder!

Over the past year, our call for community stories about the Great Depression and the Great Recession brought together people of all ages to share experiences of financial hardship.  Our youth, artists, and staff collected interviews, written tales, and photographs from folks over the city and across the region. We'd particularly like to thank neighbors in Philadelphia's Fairhill, Nicetown-Tioga, Passyunk Square, and South Philadelphia communities, as well as residents of Opportunities Tower and White Horse Village for their participation in our project storytelling.

Within most COSACOSA's constituent communities, the effects of the economic downturn are particularly pronounced.  Cross-generational storytelling of perseverance and of overcoming obstacles unites our young people with their elders in working for the advancement of Philadelphia's neighborhoods.

Beginning tomorrow, we'll be profiling each of the Spare A Dime characters -- who they are, in what stories they originated -- and what songs they'll be singing!

Offering the American people a "New Deal" in 1932, FDR was elected President by a landslide. The experience he obtained as governor,  the determination he summoned in overcoming paralytic illness, and his skill as a forthright, optimistic politician inspired the nation and gave hope to the hopeless.  As one person interviewed about the times said, " If FDR told us we could build a city on the moon, we would follow him there."

With this overwhelming mandate, FDR quickly implemented new programs to try to address the problems of the Depression.  During the first hundred days of his administration, Congress passed a series of landmark bills that created a new role for the federal government: to take an active interest in the economy and in people's lives. These early bills stabilized the banking system, created emergency relief funds, supported hard-hit farmers, conserved the American landscape, and built the nation's infrastructure.  Under FDR, Congress passed the Social  Security Act, the most enduring of the New Deal programs, providing a previously unheard-of social safety net for the elderly, for widows and children, and for individuals with disabilities.  And, as Spare A Dime will explore, FDR established the Civil Works Administration (replaced in 1935 by the Works Progress Administration), advocating work over welfare.  In the next few days we'll take a closer look at some of the major events of the Great Depression and the WPA projects that impact our Spare A Dime characters.

At the beginning of last summer, we sorted through the many first person stories collected by COSACOSA artists and youth for the Spare A Dime project.  Over and over again, stories of the Great Depression found parallels in stories of the Great Recession.  Stories revealed invention and innovation in the face of adversity.  Tragedy met heroism.  Needed rights met necessary responsibilities.  And, not surprisingly, our stories' prevailing theme sounded like a WPA slogan:  work is progress.

Recurring characters emerged from the collected stories, as well, grounded in experiences that are almost American archetypes.  Facing eviction, a mother protects her child from the harsh reality to come.  Hoping for a better life, an immigrant fights discrimination. Returning from dedicated service to his country, a veteran struggles to find a job.  The songs of Spare A Dimes tell six such prototypical American stories of life before and after the WPA, anchored by FDR and portions of his greatest speeches set to music.  A Chorus of Liberty punctuates the song cycle in celebration the (sometimes unattainable) American dream.  And, like the singers in the movie The Gold Diggers of 1933 pictured above, our Chorus gets to perform with a giant Liberty Dime! 

Check back tomorrow to learn about the art of Spare a Dime!

The first sentence sung in the Spare A Dime song cycle is "life turns on a dime."  Throughout the piece, we are reminded that, truly, anything can happen to anyone at any moment.  How we face our losses, how we struggle to overcome them, ultimately defines us as individuals, as communities, and as a nation.  America is by definition a hopeful country, a country of hopefuls.  As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) wrote in his 1940 Dayton, Ohio Address  “We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.”

Spare A Dime originated in stories collected from all over the city, from folks who lived through the Great Depression, from families dealing with economic hardships and devastating heartbreak today, and from the copious interviews collected by the WPA Federal Writers Project.  These shared stories unite us across time and remind us that our ability to empathize with each other -- to really see and listen to each other -- is essential.  Each song in the Spare A Dime cycle is "introduced" by a brief audio recording taken from these interviews and based in these common experiences.  Please continue to share your stories with us; we look forward to hearing from you.

Now that we'd selected our moment in time, how could COSACOSA tell this tale of economic collapse and the possible redemption -- of the Great Depression and the Works Progress Administration?  True to our mission, our first questions were:  how will the communities we serve participate in the art-making process? What art form(s) would best engage our constituents? 

We really could pick any type of art to share the story; COSACOSA's work is multidisciplinary.  As we like to say, our projects range from mosaics to music, from painting to poetry, from interactive theater to intercommunity gardens.  Ultimately, we decided to take our cue from one of the best known WPA programs, Federal Project Number One, which put artists across America to work writing original stories and scripts, collecting historical records, making music, producing plays, and creating new visual art.  For our project, the more art forms, the merrier, we thought; the more ways for our community partners of all ages and backgrounds to participate.

So Spare A Dime combines collected histories with original writings, songs, visual art, old and new photographs, and animated projections.  Just add audience and mix.  It's a multimedia song cycle!

BTW, in a later post we'll talk more about Federal Project Number One (don't you love how the arts were prioritized in 1935?).