What Are You Going to Be? at the Greenbelt Community Center, June 23 & 24

THE FEDERAL THEATRE PROJECT AND GREENBELT
Featuring an 80th anniversary presentation of Betty Smith’s one-act play:
What Are You Going To Be?

Greenbelt Community Center Auditorium, 15 Crescent Road

Saturday, June 23, 2018, 7:00pm
Sunday, June 24, 2018, 3:00pm

This 80th anniversary multi-media event, hosted by Chris Cherry, will recount the highlights of the WPA’s Federal Theatre Project and its connections with Greenbelt and the town’s first amateur theatrical group, the Greenbelt Players. The program will include a narration and slideshow, song performances by talented Greenbelt vocalists, and a presentation of the one-act Federal Theatre Project play, What Are You Going To Be? The play, recently rediscovered in the FTP archives at the Library Of Congress, was presented by the Greenbelt Players in the Greenbelt Community Center auditorium eighty years ago, on June 23, 1938. The play’s author, Betty Smith, was then a struggling writer, whose employment by the Federal Theater Project enabled her to keep writing. She eventually produced the world-famous novel, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. The novel’s central characters, Francie Nolan and her family, were sketched by Smith in the one-act play. The Old Greenbelt Theatre will show the film version of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, on Monday, June 25, giving Greenbelters the opportunity to trace echoes of the play in the film. Following the multi-media presentation and play performance on June 23, a reception will be held to mark the opening of the new permanent exhibit, The Federal Theater Project and Greenbelt.

Location: Greenbelt Community Center Gymnasium 15 Crescent Rd.

Tickets: $5
For tickets, call 301-397-2208 or visit the Community Center business office.