Under the New Deal’s response to the , the Works Progress Administration launched the Federal Theatre Project to provide work to unemployed theatre professionals. The state’s version was the Indiana Project, begun in December 1935 under the direction of Lee Norvelle, chair of the Department of Speech and Theatre at Indiana University.
Norvelle operated a company plus two vaudeville units in the B. F. Keith Vaudeville Theatre (built in 1875 as the Grand Opera House) at 117 North Pennsylvania Street, Indianapolis. He later helped organize a theatre for children in Gary. Norvelle ran the Indianapolis theatre as a stock company, changing productions every week or two. He avoided most controversial scripts and Living Newspaper Plays, innovations associated with the FTP. Most productions featured well-tested comedies, melodramas, or mysteries, frequently by Indiana writers such as . Norvelle also produced by Sinclair Lewis. This play was simultaneously opened by 18 different Federal Theatre Projects on August 27, 1936. He also hosted the Black Harlem Company under the direction of Orson Welles in their touring production of the “voodoo” , August 25-29, 1936.
Attendance was brisk in the beginning and local papers provided extensive coverage. Norvelle returned to his duties at IU during the summer of 1936, although he continued to supervise the theatre. Audiences, however, began to dwindle and newspaper reviewers increasingly criticized play choices and the artistic quality of productions. Simultaneously Congress mandated cutbacks in all theatre projects. Faced with such adversity, Norvelle and Flanagan closed the operation in Indianapolis on July 15, 1937.
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