The FTA & Antiwar Protests in 1971

Unsung History

In 1971, a group of performers calling themselves the Free Theatre Associates (FTA), including Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, began putting on popular antiwar shows for audiences of active-duty GIs. Over 10 months they performed near military bases all over the United States and in the Pacific Rim. The Pacific Rim tour led to a documentary, which was released briefly in July 1972 and then quickly yanked from theaters. To help us learn about the FTA, I’m joined by theater historian Dr. Lindsay Goss, Assistant Professor in the School Of Theater, Film And Media Arts at Temple University and author of F*ck the Army!: How Soldiers and Civilians Staged the GI Movement to End the Vietnam War.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,” composed by Al Piantadosi with lyrics by Alfred Bryan; the performance by the Peerless Quartet in New York City on January 6, 1915, is in the public domain and is available via the LIbrary of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is “Jane Fonda and Michael Alaimo in the FTA Show 1971;” the image is available via CC BY-SA 3.0 and can be found on Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Sources:

• “The Vietnam War: Reasons for US involvement in Vietnam,” BBC.
• “U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War: the Gulf of Tonkin and Escalation, 1964,” Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, United States Department of State.
• “Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964),” The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
• “Vietnam: An unpopular war, but an important legacy,” by Kenneth Dodd, Kessler Air Force Base, January 27, 2016.
• “The Vietnam War,” Iowa PBS.
• “GI Movement Special Section“ coordinated by Jessie Kindig, Antiwar and Radical History Project, University of Washington.
• “How Coffeehouses Fueled the Vietnam Peace Movement,” by David L. Parsons, The New York Times, January 9, 2018.
• “FTA! Behind the Scenes on the Anti-war Show Tour in Asia,” by Elaine Elinson, Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
• “FTA [video],” directed by Francine Parker, 1972.

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