From the Field: First Person Festival’s Depression-era Stories

Anne Burnett, Program Director at Historic Germantown, shares her reflections on a recent HPP field trip.

On Wednesday, November 4^th, I joined a group of museum professionals as HPP’s guests at the 8^th Annual First Person Arts Festival, held at the Painted Bride Art Center. The focus of the evening’s festivities, the first Festival events I’d attended, was billed as a combination of history, storytelling, song and food; or put another way, an evening that’s both entertaining and delicious—What’s not to like?

Upon arrival at the Painted Bride, our group was ushered into a corner gallery space in the Center, transformed through the creative use of lighting, music, and documentary images projected on the wall, into a Depression-era Speakeasy, featuring tasty hors d’oeuvres and some very brightly-colored gin drinks. From there, we moved to a small meeting space to talk with Festival Director Vicki Solot about how the focus of Depression-era stories came into being from their HPP-funded Discovery Grant. We heard from historian and faculty member at The New School Julia Foulkes as well, as she shared more about the ways in which the project set out to weave art and history together.

We headed next to a dining area where Jack’s Firehouse staff served up an incredible buffet of traditional regional cuisine in a family-style setting. I tried it all, even the booya – a mysterious stew-like dish that smelled delicious. Author Pat Willard’s fascinating talk during dinner,—in which the secrets of making booya and other regional culinary dishes were revealed,—was one of the real highlights of the evening for me. Pat shared her experiences in researching the work of WPA writers assigned to document America’s culinary heritage, for her book America Eats!. I gained a whole new appreciation for the thinking that went into this WPA project: here were writers setting out to document not so much a list of ingredients, or recipes, but the people and stories behind them. Pat’s own stories, collected while retracing the travels of those writers, added a wonderful dimension to the program, carrying America Eats! full circle. Rarely do I leave a book talk and signing without a copy in my bag, and this evening was no exception.

The final program of our evening , “Songs for Any Depression,” highlighted the Depression era’s musical legacy. In their informal introductory discussion, scholars/authors Julia Foulkes and Morris Dickstein did a wonderful job setting the stage for the musical performances that followed, placing the spoken word pieces, musicians and songs in historical and cultural context. For me, the size of the theater made for a very special, intimate experience as Woody Guthrie’s granddaughter Sarah Lee Guthrie and her husband Johnny Irion performed some of Woody’s and their own songs next, followed by equally inspiring sets by Kim and Reggie Harris. [To view these performances, see post below.] It seemed only fitting that the voice of folk music on my radio for so many years now, Gene Shay, would host this portion of the festival.

Overall, I was struck by the creative ways in which the Festival was able to mine the richness of material recorded and documented by the WPA, offering a choice sampling of the many, many personal stories that connect with all of us in some way, as we navigate through similar hard times today.