The Federal Theatre Project was a division of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which provided employment for large numbers of artists, writers, and performers during the Great Depression (1929-1939). The Federal Theatre began in 1935 and, until its end in 1939, flourished as the first and only federally sponsored and subsidized theater program in the United States. Directed by Hallie Flanagan (1880-1969), it was a way for theatrical professionals to gain employment during the Depression.

The number of unemployed theatre workers in Los Angeles was second only to those in New York. Eda Edson worked on the Los Angeles Federal Theatre Project productions "Follow the Parade" and "The Black Crook." In their 1939 publication, An Exposition Workshop: Readings in Modern Controversy, authors Claude M. Simpson, Stuart G. Brown, and Wallace Stegner state the following about the production of Follow the Parade, "Under the direction of Eda Edson, formerly employed in vaudeville as a conductor, the variety unit wrote the sketches, lyrics, and music of Follow the Parade, a full evening's entertainment. Part topical revue, part circus, part dramatic show, it ran in Los Angeles for ten weeks before large audiences, and then was taken to the Texas Centennial in Dallas, where it played for the rest of the summer. In the vivid language of Daily Variety 'The Federal Theater's Follow the Parade is the biggest half-buck's worth of entertainment dished up locally in many years.'" Edson later went on to more conducting work, and in 1953 she authored the short self help guide "The world is your stage...learn how to be the leading lady: How acting in everyday life will reveal the vivid, lovely, effective you."