The Arena: A Radio Play
November 13th, 2026 | 7:30pm
The Bronx Music Hall | 438 E 163rd St, Bronx, NY 10451
In 1938, the Federal Theatre Project – a New Deal program, helmed by Hallie Flanagan, that put thousands of out-of-work theater artists back to work – was brought before a closed congressional committee hearing that led to its shutdown.
The Arena re-imagines that hearing as a series of vaudevillian sketches, giving the artists of America’s only national theater their proverbial day in court.
The story unfolds inside the dream of an out-of-work composer who discovers Flanagan’s memoir. As the hearing room transforms into an arena (part vaudeville stage, part gladiator pit) the artists of the Federal Theatre fight for their lives the only way they know how: by performing. Along the way, The Arena asks what art is worth and what society owes the people who make it.
Written and Directed by Ash Singer
Music Composition by Shira Bouskila
Based on Hallie Flanagan's out-of-print memoir Arena, artist testimonies, and congressional hearing transcripts.
Starring Jacqueline Knapp, Ash Singer, Esther Ayomide Akinsanya, Ryan Pollock-Comer, Aaron David Kapner
Produced by Kate Szekely
Presented in partnership with The Bronx Music Hall
This project is made possible with public funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and with funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, both administered by the Bronx Council on the Arts.
