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Power
SPECIAL EVENTS
Talkback with Susan Quinn
photo by Barry Goldstein
Susan Quinn      Saturday, March 28, 2009
      following the 8pm performance of Power
Metropolitan is honored to have Susan Quinn, author of Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times, join us this evening for a discussion of  the history, legends, successes and failures of the Federal Theatre Project.

Visit Quinn's website to read reviews, exerpts from the Furious Improvisation, and to find out where to purchase her books.

Biography (from her website):
Susan Quinn grew up in Chillicothe, Ohio, and graduated from Oberlin College. She began her writing career as a newspaper reporter on a suburban daily outside of Cleveland, following two years as an apprentice actor at the Cleveland Playhouse. In 1967, she published her first book under the name Susan Jacobs: a nonfiction account of the making of a Broadway play called On Stage (Alfred A. Knopf). In 1972, after moving to Boston, she became a regular contributor to an alternative Cambridge weekly, The Real Paper, then a contributor and staff writer on Boston Magazine. In 1979, she won the Penney-Missouri magazine award for an investigative article for Boston Magazine on dangerous cargo transported through the city, and the Golden Hammer Award from the National Association of Home Builders for an investigative article on home inspections. She has written articles for many publications, including the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and Ms. Magazine.

In 1987, she published her first biography, A Mind of Her Own; The Life of Karen Horney (Simon and Schuster, Addison-Wesley and Perseus) for which she received the Boston Globe's Laurence L. Winship Award.

For her next book, Marie Curie: A Life, she was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation writing residency at Bellagio in Italy. A reviewer in Science magazine predicted that her book "is certain to be this generation's biography of Marie Curie.” Marie Curie was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was on the short list for the Fawcett Book Prize in England. It has been translated into eight languages, and was awarded the Elle Grand prix des lectrices in 1997.

In 2001, Quinn published Human Trials: Scientists, Investors and Patients in the Quest for a Cure. It was described as a “real-life thriller” by the New York Daily News. Human Trials was chosen by Library Journal as one of the best sci-tech books of 2001.

Susan Quinn has lectured all over the United States, and has spoken in France and Poland about her biography of Marie Curie. In 2000, the University of Wisconsin at Stout awarded her a Doctorate of Humane Letters.

Quinn has served as the Chair of PEN New England, a branch of the writers’ organization PEN International. She is an accomplished flutist, and continues to participate in chamber groups on a regular basis. Susan is married to a psychoanalyst, Daniel Jacobs and has two children and four grandchildren. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts just outside of Boston.

Furious Improvisation
How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times

An Interview with Susan Quinn:
Brookline author tells story of the New Deal's Federal Theatre Project

"'The very first Living Newspaper, called Ethiopia, was going to depict a sitting president and the federal government said they couldn’t do it,' Quinn said. 'Today, that's "The Daily Show’s" bread and butter.'

Quinn is currently on a book tour and has found the response in the crowds to be highly favorable, with people coming up to her completely surprised that such a program existed.

'The people who have heard of [Federal Theatre Project] don’t know the extent of it,' Quinn said. 'I’ve always had a good turnout with a lot of people interested in the idea of it.'

Does that mean the program could be resurrected in the future?

'I wish the book would inspire a more courageous support of the arts by the federal government,' Quinn said. 'Hallie Flanagan had a famous quote. It was "Art, to be worth its salt, has to have a fair amount of gunpowder in that salt."'" Read more...

--The Brookline Tab


Furious ImprovisationReviews for Furious Improvisation

“Susan Quinn has gifted us with a key moment in the history of F.D.R.’s New Deal. Especially thrilling and revelatory is the work of the Arts Project of the WPA. Not only were there rakes and shovels, jobs and food for family, there was exhilarating and hopeful theatre, music, and painting, lifting our spirits. They gave us all hope.”
—Studs Terkel

“This fine book combines elements of political history, theater lore, and a saga of social justice. In showing us a rare triumph of bold artists in league with brave public servants, Quinn rescues the idea that the imagination and government can be friends instead of strangers. Our times are desperate, too, and Furious Improvisation comes at just the right moment.”
—James Carroll, author of House of War
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