The WPA & the Golden Age · Reading & the Stage
Voodoo Macbeth — Federal Theatre Project, 1936
Anthony Velonis · Federal Theatre Project silkscreen, Negro Theatre Unit, Harlem, 1936
What it is
A Federal Theatre Project poster announcing the Negro Theatre Unit’s Harlem production of Macbeth — the production now remembered as the "Voodoo Macbeth," directed by a 20-year-old Orson Welles.
Why it matters
The FAP’s poster division sold the ticket stub with the same confident flats it sold the library card and the national park — reading and the stage, funded as public good, for an all-Black company mounting Shakespeare in Harlem in 1936.
What to notice
Lettering doing all the work — no illustration, just type built like architecture.
The stage, subsidized and unashamed of it.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Designer
- Anthony Velonis
- Printer / house
- WPA Federal Art Project silkscreen shop
- Format
- Theater poster
- Poster published
- Federal Theatre Project silkscreen, Negro Theatre Unit, Harlem, 1936
- Source
- Library of Congress (via Wikimedia Commons mirror)
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. government program work (WPA Federal Art Project), any year. Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-17.
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan's resolution doesn't clear our floor for a physical print, so this piece is offered as a digital download only.
Size
$29.00
