The living newspaper as a theatrical form began during the Russian Civil War when pro-Soviet newspapers were first read aloud, then later performed, to factory workers and illiterate soldiers in the Red Army. Soviet living newspapers were known as zhivaia gazeta, literally translated as “live newspaper”.

Characteristics of Soviet Living Newspapers

  • openly, and proudly, a form of agitprop (agitated propaganda)
  • communicated Communist policy in the form of political theatre
  • structured as a dramatisation of the printed newspaper
  • followed the format of a newspaper with dramatised headlines, local and international news
  • consisted of dozens of short sketches (episodic)
  • heavily didactic
  • highly portable productions performed in a range of non-traditional spaces
  • limited or no use of a set
  • basic props only
  • simple costumes
  • eclectic in style – anti-realistic / non-naturalistic
  • no attempt at illusion, as per the theatre or realism
  • use of a narrator
  • individuality was quashed with non-identifying character names
  • aspects of vaudeville, song, acrobatics, music hall, skits, pantomimes, dance
  • use of stereotypes, satirical humour (mocking) and caricature
  • use of fragmentary costumes and exaggerated props to denote character

After living newspapers began to decline in Russia around 1932, the form soon began to gain popularity in the United States. Worker’s theatres sprung up in the early 1930s, effectively behaving as agitprop theatre just like their Russian cousins before them. By 1935, formal living newspaper plays emerged as one of a number of genres in the Federal Theatre Project, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal era Works Progress Administration.

Living Newspaper One Third of a Nation

During the Great Depression, an estimated 20,000 theatre workers were unemployed across America, many of them in New York City. Between 1935 and 1939, the federal government funded productions about social and economic issues of the day, at the same time employing up to 12,000 theatre-makers involved in every aspect of production.

Although only a handful of Federal Theatre Project productions are remembered today, there were more than one thousand shows in thirty-one states. Audiences were largely admitted free of charge. Shows were written by teams of researchers functioning as dramaturgs. Scripts, and even theatre programs, listed the research team’s bibliography. The accuracy of the research was paramount.

Characteristics of American Living Newspapers

Living newspapers in America, as part of the Federal Theatre Project, had a number of similarities to their Russian counterparts, but some distinct differences, also:

  • American productions did not focus on dramatising events in the daily newspaper
  • nor did they follow the structure of a printed newspaper on stage
  • each production focused on one main topic or theme affecting society
  • Hallie Flanagan became director of the Federal Theatre Project in 1935
  • documentary theatre using fact as the basis for the plot
  • verbatim theatre with public figures and newspaper articles often quoted in performances
  • the collective team of researchers and writers painstakingly compiled the scripts (dramaturgs)
  • Arthur Arent synthesised the works, readying them for performance
  • eclectic in style
  • “Loudpseaker” character functioning as a narrator character
  • lack of individuality with character names – based on social or economic function
  • multi-roling – players performing multiple roles
  • use of shadowplay puppetry, dance and pantomime.
  • large time jumps between episodes
  • use of projection
  • full musical scores
  • time sequences were disjointed – flashbacks and flash-forwards
  • in contrast to the Soviet productions, the American newspapers had detailed costumes
  • constructed set pieces
  • didactic in nature – teaching the audience about a social problem
  • left-wing and politicised

Four of the most successful Federal Theatre project living newspapers were:

  1. Power – a play about the ownership of energy utilities
  2. Triple A Plowed Under – a play about the farming crisis
  3. Injunction Granted – a play about worker’s rights
  4. One-Third of a Nation – a play about the housing crisis, particularly slums in New York City

While one of the main aims of shows funded by the Federal Theatre Project was to have adult theatre free of censorship, it was censorship that became its downfall. By 1938 the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities began investigating the program, fearing the subject matter of its plays and the communist sympathies of many of its key personnel. The government abruptly closed the program the following year.

While the content of these early American documentary plays was drawn from everyday life, particularly the experiences of first and second-generation working-class immigrants, their form was decidedly modernist, embracing collage, montage, expressionism, and minimalism in a symbiotic relationship with new forms of visual art, early cinema, and atonal musical compositions.

Jules Odendahl-James, A History of U.S. Documentary Theatre in Three Stages
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A living newspaper is a theatrical form in which social issues and current events are dramatised in order to prompt action. Living newspapers typically have elements of social activism, documentary theatre, left-wing political theatre, verbatim theatre and agitated propaganda (agitprop). They were first used in the Russian Civil War, where pro-Soviet daily newspapers were read aloud to illiterate factory workers and soldiers in the Red Army. Soon, teams of workers performed stories from the newspapers to other workers as propaganda. Today it is most commonly associated with the Federal Theatre Project, part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal era Works Progress Administration where thousands of theatre workers across America were employed in government-funded productions between 1935 and 1939. – Justin Cash

Living Newspaper: 50 Interesting Facts – The Drama Teacher

This resource provides an extensive list of facts about the Living Newspaper form, detailing its origins, characteristics, and notable productions, offering valuable insights for drama educators.

Excellent analysis of the Federal Theatre Project from all angles covering mass unemployment, politics and the subject matter of productions.

Wikipedia entry that includes a useful definition for the term and the form’s origins in both Russia and America.

Excellent summary of the form plus a detailed analysis of various productions such as Power, Spirochete, and One-Third of a Nation.

Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on the Federal Theatre Project’s origins and purpose in America.

Summary of the living newspaper Power.

Federal Theatre Project – Living Newspaper

Power

Opened: 23 Feb. 1937. A living newspaper focusing on energy from the consumer’s perspective. The drama provoked a debate about public versus private ownership of power utilities. Was access to power a privilege or a right?

Triple A Plowed Under

Opened 14 Mar. 1936. A play consisting of 26 vignettes about the plight of the American farmer and surplus crops post-WWI. The play criticised the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 (the “triple A” in the title).

One Third of a Nation

Opened 17 Jan. 1938. Drama portraying the failure of the Housing Act of 1937 and increased slums in New York City. The title refers to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech where he said one third of the nation remained ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-nourished.

Spirochete

Opened 20 February 1939. Public health living newspaper portraying the history of syphilis and the spread of the sexually transmitted infection across America. The play supported the U.S. Surgeon General’s “war on syphilis”.

Injunction Granted

Opened 24 July 1936. Drama about the history of labour relations in the United States, championing the cause of the workers’ unions. The title refers to court orders that permitted employers to break strikes and stop workers from picketing.

Example of a living newspaper project created at the University of Texas on the topic of human rights – useful for adapting in the classroom.

The Living Newspaper is a dramatization of a problem – composed in greater or lesser extent of many news events, all bearing on the one subject and interlarded with typical but non-factual representations of the effect of these news events on the people to whom the problem is of great importance.

– Arthur Arent, Living Newspaper author, Federal Theatre Project.

A useful overview of the Federal Theatre Project.

Original newspaper article and creative credits for a production of One-Third of a Nation, adapted for Philadelphia at America’s oldest theatre, the Walnut St Theatre, in October 1938.

Comprehensive overview of the depth and breadth of various Federal Theatre Project initiatives between 1935 and 1939.

1937 play script for One-Third of a Nation.

1936 play script fo Triple A Plowed Under.

1938 play script for Spirochete.

1938 play script for Injunction Granted.

The Soviet living newspaper, or zhivaia gazeta, began during the Russian Civil War as a method to act out a pro-Soviet version of the news for mainly illiterate Red Army soldiers. During the 1920s, it evolved into an experimental form of agitprop theater that attracted the interest of foreigners, who hoped to develop new methods of political theater in their own countries. In the United States, the living newspaper format was first adopted by American communist circles.

– Lynn Mally, The Americanization of the Soviet Living Newspaper, February 2008, p.1


Academic essay on the history of the Federal Theatre Project in America, Federal Theatre, Melodrama, Social Protest, and Genius, from the Library of Congress.

Summary of Power, a 1937 Living Newspaper consisting of a mixture of documentary drama and vaudeville.

Living Newspaper One-Third of a Nation Poster

Article about the form’s origins in the USSR before its adoption in America, with artefacts from the British Library.

Wikipedia summary of the play One-Third of a Nation.

Although living newspapers changed significantly once they migrated to America, they shared crucial elements with their Soviet predecessors: they addressed vital contemporary events; they integrated filmic techniques, including slide shows, music, and sometimes film clips; and they employed a disjointed, episodic style of presentation. In addition, they avoided the conventions of the traditional proscenium stage and made use of stereotyped characters instead of figures with psychological depth.

– Lynn Mally, The Americanization of the Soviet Living Newspaper, 2008, p.2.

Overview of the Federal Theatre Project, its background, operations and various well-known productions.

Outstanding academic paper The Americanization of the Soviet Living Newspaper covering the living newspapers in Russia and America and the similarities and differences between the two forms.

A brief explanation of the concept of a living newspaper and its uptake in the USSR, Germany and America in the early 20th century.

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