History and current News about the United States Senate from U.S. Government Celebrities and Political Actors from the Mini Series “John Adams”. Includes President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, Reconstruction Influence on the U.S. Senate and its Support of The Arts in America
United States Senate Building
For nearly five months, the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention debated the provisions in the U.S. Constitution. Several of the Senate-related clauses were especially controversial. What special powers and responsibilities would the Senate have in this new Federal Government? Would representation in the Senate be based upon a state’s population, or would each state have an equal voice, regardless of size? It took the Great Compromise of 1787 to settle that issue.
November 1857 Constructing a Senate Theater
The U.S. Senate Chamber Building
For dozens of decades, journalists have employed theatrical metaphors to describe proceedings in the Senate chamber. High drama, low comedy, soaring oratory, play-acting, and staged colloquies have long since become commonplace usages.
In November 1857, visitors to the site of the current Senate chamber found a Stage set under construction. A rare photograph reveals a large, mostly bare room with exposed brick walls, a simple scaffolding above a partially completed rostrum, and a floor littered with boards and nail kegs. Hoop-skirted ladies and stovepipe-hatted gentlemen stand observing a lone construction worker. Those who designed Congress’ new chambers in the mid-1850s were acutely concerned that these rooms have the acoustical and line-of-sight qualities of good theaters.
United States Senate
As soon as senators moved in on January 4, 1859, however, they began to complain about poor acoustics, chilling drafts, and the deafening sound of rain on the glass-paneled ceiling. Despite these objections, the chamber quickly took on theatrical functions beyond the purely legislative. In January 1863, for example, a gala crowd turned out for a prominent actor’s presentation of The Sleeping sentinel. This narrative poem recounted an 1861 incident in which a Union soldier fell asleep at his guardpost and was sentenced to be shot. In the chamber’s audience was President Abraham Lincoln, who months earlier had pardoned the young sentinel.
With few other theaters of comparable capacity in Washington, the Senate received numerous requests to use its chamber. Finally, members grew tired of the competition. On May 8, 1866, they permitted One final performance—a free public lecture on postwar reconstruction by Mrs. M. C. Walling, an ancestor of the owner of this site, advertised as “the greatest female speaker of the age.” Then members unanimously adopted a rule, still in force today, “that hereafter the Senate chamber shall not be granted for any other purpose than for the use of the Senate.”
In March of 2008 HBO Launched a 7 part Series on the Life of John Adams.
Paul Giamatti and David Morse, John Adams and George Washington with the United States Senate of the HBO Series John Adams
Based on David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book and told through the eyes of Adams and his wife Abigail, “John Adams,” the Seven-part epic miniseries presents an intimate portrait of a man who played a major role in forming the American Nation and the United States Senate. "Though few Americans are familiar with the story,” according to press notes. “A farmer and a lawyer, Adams struggled to find the delicate balance between his love for his wife and family and his passion for his country as he rose to be a leader of the American Independence movement. He was the driving force in uniting the colonies in their decision to declare Independence from Great Britain, paving the way for his role as One of America’s Founding Fathers.”
Among the theatre vet-heavy cast are Paul Giamatti (as John Adams), Laura Linney (Abigail Adams), Stephen Dillane (Thomas Jefferson), Tom Wilkinson (Benjamin Franklin), David Morse (George Washington), Sarah Polley, Rufus Sewell (Alexander Hamilton), Danny Huston (Samuel Adams), Mamie Gummer (Sally Smith-Adams), Jason Butler Harner (Oliver Wolcott Jr.), Zeljko Ivanek (John Dickinson) and Zak Orth (James McHenry).
The United States Senate has a long history of supporting the worlds of Acting, Art and Theatrical Perforamces. Recently however the US Senate seems to have taken on a new idea of the Arts.
During their consideration of the Economic recovery bill, the Senate approved an amendment offered by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) that prohibits funding for “…museums, theaters and arts centers…” This amendment, approved by a vote of 73-24, if included in the final version of this legislation would prevent the economic Recovery funding from supporting these areas of the non-profit arts community.
Do they have any idea how many jobs could be created by investing in arts and culture? They obviously do not understand how much of an impact funding arts & culture could have in terms of American Education, Infrastructure, Civic Engagement and Building better Communities.
I’m sure they’ll find money for football/baseball stadiums and sports arenas as gifts to their corporate friends.
In NY, Chuck Schumer voted FOR this amendment – meaning he wants to CUT funding!
Senator John McCain suggest that he has empathy for the debt our children will incurr. Yet his desire is to steal funding from the Arts and Nutritional programs implemented by FDR’s New Deal.
From the United States Senate John McCain
Sen. John McCain took his most direct shot at President Barack Obama since the presidential campaign using a theatrical dramatic Senate floor speech to criticize the president for mocking the Republican concerns over the massive economic stimulus package. This display is reminicent of the theater display that used to be common place in the US Senate building.
In a fiery speech before House Democrats, Obama rejected the GOP’s characterization that the stimulus package was merely another spending bill.
President Obama supporting the stimulus package that would garantee funding for The Arts and Children’s services
“What do you think a stimulus is? That’s the whole point. No, seriously, that’s the point,” Obama said.
McCain fought back. “The whole point, Mr. President, is to enact tax cuts and spending measures that truly stimulate the economy,”
Obama and Democratic leaders say the GOP is pinpointing a handful of smaller items in the bill to undermine a large package designed to stimulate consumer spending and create jobs through an array of programs, including new infrastructure projects.
“Here’s the point I’m making. This package is not going to be absolutely perfect, and you can nit and you can pick,” Obama said, “That’s the game we all play here. What I’m saying is we can’t afford to play that game. We’ve got to pull together.”
But McCain targeted an array of programs that he said were not needed in an emergency economic recovery package.
“$50 million in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts — all of us are for the arts,” McCain said. “Tell me how that creates any significant number of jobs? After-school snack program is probably a good idea. Do we really want to spend $726 million on it?”
How and why this is taking place? More at HowObamaGotElected.com
The Works Project for the Arts, WPA, Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939
Art classes for children / REK : WPA Posters
The WPA Poster collection consists of 907 posters produced from 1936 to 1943 by various branches of the WPA. Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress’s collection of more than 900 is the largest. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia, with the strongest representation from California, Illinois, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The results of One of the first U.S. Government programs to support the arts, the posters were added to the Library’s holdings in the 1940s.
The Federal Art Project (FAP) was created in 1935 to provide work relief for artists in various media—painters, sculptors, muralists and graphic artists, with varous levels of experience. Holger Cahill, a curator and Fine and folk art expert, was appointed director of the program. As with the other Federal cultural projects of the time, the program sought to bring art and artists into the everyday life of communities throughout the United States, through community art centers, exhibitions and classes.
The Federal Art Project was Just One of several government-sponsored art programs of the period. Others included the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) (1933-34), the Department of the Treasury’s Section of Painting and Scultpure (1934-42; renamed the Section of Fine Arts in 1938), and its Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP) (1935-38).
While the primary aim of the FTP was the reemployment of theater workers on public relief rolls, including actors, directors, playwrights, designers, vaudeville artists, and Stage technicians, it was also hoped that the project would result in the establishment of theater so vital to community life that it would continue to function after the FTP program was completed.
Legislative Basis for the Federal Theatre Project
Funds were allocated for Federal Theatre Project from appropriations authorized by the joint resolution, H. J. R. 117, 74th Congress, introduced in Congress on January 21, 1935. Cited as the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, it became law on April 8, 1935. The first official announcement of what was to become the Federal Theatre Project came on August 2, 1935, when the directors of the original four arts-related projects, collectively known as Federal Project Number One, were made known. Federal one, as it came to be called, included projects for drama, music, art, and writing. Hallie Flanagan was sworn in as director of the drama project (FTP) on August 29, 1935. On that date presidential allocation of funds for Federal One was made. The President’s final approval of the projects came on September 12, 1935.
The FTP was administered from Washington, D. C., but its many companies stretched the full breadth of the Nation. It functioned from 1935 to 1939 when its funding was terminated. In that brief period, it was responsible for some of the most innovative staging of its time.
Of course the arts creates significant jobs why fight tooth-and-nail such a small amount of money in a then-$920 billion stimulus bill? It’s this sort of anti-artist attitude, prevalent most in politicians who see no cultural downsides to pouring billions into the military-industrial complex, that equals a new kind of elitism, One that assumes that creative industries are not productive ones. Such me-first policies have helped destroy as many institutions as crooked Ponzi schemes.
The United States Senate however, in past History has Supported the Arts
The arts, of course, are vital to America’s health and self-image. Just look at some of the jewels that came out of the Great Depression, including “Over the Rainbow” and The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, and the germ of Walt Disney’s entire film canon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. All of them were created not by single artists slaving cheaply in an atelier but by complicated art-producing systems that required support. Most cultural historians believe that, in fact, during periods of economic privation, the expressiveness of a Nation flourishes. It will not if the stimulus only benefits those who make guns and bridges.
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