It CAN Happen Here!

by Melody Brooks, Katrin Hilbe, Tess Howsam, Daniel Jacobs, Susan Quinn
Performed: - 5-25 46th Avenue, Long Island City, NY 11101, Mar 06 - Mar 30, 2025
Category:

A co-production between NPTC and Culture Lab LIC, It CAN Happen Here! weaves together three strands of storyline: the achievements of the Federal Theatre Project; the ground-breaking work of its fearless leader, Hallie Flanagan; and the political forces that destroyed it. It’s a collaborative masterpiece between five co-creators, an amazing design team, our hugely talented ensemble of ten. I am grateful and humbled to be the director in addition to one of the co-creators of a piece of theatre history with political resonance all too real today.

“If this first government theatre in our country had been less alive it might have lived longer. But I do believe anyone who worked in it regrets that it stood, from first to last, against reaction, against prejudice, against racial, religious and political intolerance. Anyone who thinks that those things do not need fighting for today is out of touch with reality.”

Check out these Raves: Thinking Theatre and Theatre Beyond Broadway!

Creative Team:
Direction: Katrin Hilbe
Producer & Dramaturgy: Melody Brooks
Choreographer & Movement Direction: Penelope Rose Deen
Production Design: Tess Howsam
Costume Design: Lisa Renée Jordan
Lighting Design: Sara Gosses
Sound Design & Projection Management: Andy Evan Cohen
Projections Design: Erwin Falcon
Puppet & Props Design, Graphics Design: Gaby FeBland
Stage Manager: Cat Gillespie
Assistant Stage Manager: Ximena Morellon
Technical Director: Josh Iacovelli

Cast: Theresa Rose, Nick Radu-Blackburn, Jomack Miranda, Allie Beltran, DJ Davis, Chase Lee, Max Bank, Emma Sarah Davis, Megan Lomax, Cheyenne Springette.

Photography: Al Foote III




Press

"Faced with the current, billionaire-led dismantling of the federal government in the United States, it's hard–well, harder–to imagine the level of robust financial support for the theater arts at the national level that is detailed in It CAN Happen Here!: Hallie Flanagan & the Federal Theatre Project. It's much less difficult to imagine the acts of censorship and accusations of subversion, communism, and race-baiting leveled at theater artists by grandstanding politicians out to destroy that very support. At least in the political landscape of the 1930s, as we learn at one point in this painstakingly researched, inventively staged, and fantastically acted production, a congressman could attract public shame for not knowing who Christopher Marlowe is."
John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards, Thinking Theatre NYC

"Art. It reflects life. Life. It is art. (...) It CAN Happen Here is the story of a woman in history I am, quite frankly, upset to have never heard about. Hallie Flanagan was a visionary. (...) Her storylines were seamlessly crafted to intertwine. Under the artistic direction of Katrin Hilbe with natural flowing choreography by Penelope Rose Deen, they certainly did. Hilbe, Deen, and the cast created a rich piece of art that transitioned smoothly from scene to scene. The play felt quick and on the verge of change at any moment, a true reflection of the unpredictability of life."
Amanda Montoni , Theatre beyond Broadway