GREAT DEPRESSION ROLES

HARLEM JAZZ MUSICIAN:

You are a jazz musician living in Harlem. You left New Orleans on your 15th birthday and hitched your way up to New York. Within a week, you were playing your trombone in the studio during the day and at the Cotton Club five nights a week. In your first year in Harlem, you made making more money than your pappy did in his whole life cleaning dishes. Man, those were the days! Playing tunes with some of the best musicians in the world at the fanciest shin-digs this side of the Mississippi. But people didn’t feel much like dancing when the Depression swept across the country. Now it’s just you and your trombone, playing by the fire in an alley with some other down and out musicians.

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HOMELESS CHILD:

You are a young child living on the outskirts of Cincinnati, Ohio. Your parents spend nights talking about the old days -- when there was so much food for dinner that they couldn’t eat it all and when a pair of pants ripped they just went to the general store and bought another pair. But the general store has been closed for years and even if it was still open, your family wouldn’t have enough money to buy anything. The bank took your farm three years ago, so you had to move out. You stayed with your neighbors for awhile, and then your cousins, and now you are staying in an abandoned library. You don’t mind because you have so many books to read, but you know that Mama and Papa are not happy. They are arguing all of the time about money. You’ve tried to get a job as a farm hand, but you’re still too small. 

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FACTORY WORKER:

You are a factory worker at the GM car plant in Flint, Michigan. You grew up in downtown Detroit and dreamed of pitching for the Tigers and playing alongside Ty Cobb, but an arm injury ended your career before it began. Lucky for you, Detroit, the Motor City, was in the middle of an economic boom when you graduated high school, and there was a good-paying factory job waiting for anyone that needed work. That all changed when the Great Depression hit Detroit. Automobile sales plummeted, and every factory laid off thousands of workers. You still have a job… for now. But wages are falling by the day, and the company is asking workers to work longer for less. 

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FARMER:

You are a member of a family living in Oklahoma in 1935.  Your family has lived on this land for two generations.  You love everything about living on a farm--raising animals, growing things with your hands, working with machines, and doing all the chores to keep your farm running and your family happy.  Hard work is a part of your everyday life!  Your family had a great deal of success throughout the 1920’s, and you even made the exciting step of purchasing your very first tractor.  You had to take out a loan from the bank to pay for your new tractor, but you are confident that a few more years of good crops will make it easy to repay the loan.  Then the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl hits…..
your crops are failing, the bank is demanding payment for your loan, and your family is running out of food!

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BANKER:

You are a successful, wealthy family living in Boston, Massachusetts.  The head of your family works for the elite Bank of New England.  You have lived a life of luxury.  You have all the best clothing, shoes, multiple cars, an enormous mansion, a vacation home in Connecticut, a maid, and pretty much anything you ever wanted!!  Then, on October 29, 1929, the impossible happened.  The stock market crashed, and your family lost all of its savings.  You survived the early years of the Great Depression by selling many of your treasured possessions.  But the Depression has showed no signs of ending…..and you are about to sell your last valuable possession--your home.

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HOMELESS ADULT:

You are a member of a family living in Chicago, Illinois.  You have worked for the last several years as an employee at the Drake Hotel.  You loved interacting with the guests, and helping them to have a memorable trip to the great city of Chicago.  But when the Great Depression hit the United States, one of the first things to dramatically end was tourism.  The hotel had to lay off almost all of its employees.  You have been out of work for 3 years.  In the beginning, you scraped by by working odd jobs around the city.  But there was never enough work and the bills began to stack up, until eventually you lost your home.  Your family is now homeless.  You sleep in shelters and missions around Chicago, constantly looking for a safe place to call your own.  You have very few possessions left--but you still have your family.

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