The Great Depression produced some of the era’s most pointed political theatre, but it also produced comedy. Dr. Paul Gagliardi joins the podcast to discuss his book All Play and No Work: American Work Ideals and the Comic Plays of the Federal Theatre Project, exploring how comic plays staged under the Federal Theatre Project grappled with American ideas about labor, leisure, and the dignity of work during one of the nation’s most difficult economic periods.

Paul unpacks why comedy was such a vital tool for the Federal Theatre Project, how these plays both reinforced and complicated prevailing work ideals, and what this overlooked corner of Depression-era theatre history can tell us about American attitudes toward labor today.