College of Fine Arts

The Living Newspaper Project, a collaboration of the Humanities Institute, the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, the Performance as Public Practice Program of UT's Department of Theatre and Dance, and Theatre Action Project, is an innovative program designed to reinvigorate civic education in Austin-area high schools through the research and dramatization of current human rights issues.

Troupe St. Stephen's performs their play Got Rights? Fall 2006

Roughly twenty teachers from eight different public and private Austin-area high schools are using a Living Newspaper unit in their English, Social Studies, Theatre Arts, Economics, or ESL classes in the 2006-2007 academic year.

A number of UT graduate and law students train participating high school teachers on how to incorporate Living Newspapers into their curriculum. Teachers are provided a Living Newspaper Resource Guide that offers background and lesson plans for a flexible, interdisciplinary program ranging from one to six weeks. It begins with a discussion of human rights, and then provides lesson plans on choosing and researching topics, creating scripts, visual mapping, collaging, and acting. Teachers and students are encouraged to use textbooks, blogs, podcasts, debate groups, UN websites and international media to create scripts.

UT graduate and law students also assist teachers and students in defining, understanding, and researching human rights-related issues and topics. Additionally, graduate students help teachers and students develop the writing and performance skills necessary to compose and produce a Living Newspaper.

Local high school teachers learn how to use Living Newspapers in their curriculum

Meg Sullivan, a graduate student in the Performance as Public Practice (PPP) program, is a consultant for the Living Newspaper project. "It's really inspiring to go into a government or economics classroom and talk about how performance can contribute to their studies. I've really enjoyed each visit because the students seem very excited to be given a chance to be creatively engaged in their critical studies."

In the fall of 2006, Mallhaz Jibladze, a teacher at the Liberal Arts and Sciences Academy (LASA) at LBJ High School in Austin, guided his twenty-seven seniors through the Living Newspaper process for their final projects. Adapting the program for his AP Economics classroom, Ms. Sullivan and another graduate student, Brian Gatten, helped Mr. Jibladze encourage his students to explore the real-life stories born of economic philosophies. Working in small groups, students wrote scripts, which they then captured on film to screen for their peers and teachers at the end of the semester.

Second year PPP graduate student Erica Nagel has visited LBJ and Connally High Schools as a Living Newspaper consultant. Ms. Nagel's primary artistic interests are on dramaturgy and new play development so her classroom visits have been focused on helping the students refine their scripts to tell the stories they want to tell. Other visits have included helping the students brainstorm interesting staging ideas. "I've been really impressed with how the students have hooked into the personal side of big issues, as well as how open they've been to non-literal and non-linear structure. They are coming up with pieces that both thoroughly investigate the issue they've chosen, and tell a story in artistically engaging and innovative ways."

Troupe St. Stephen's performs their play Got Rights? Fall 2006

Also in the fall, five high school students at St. Stephens Episcopal School produced the first public performance of Austin's Living Newspapers program. Troupe St. Stephens dramatized the complicated scenarios of children's rights abuses around the world, including the U.S.

Ann David, Living Newspaper Teacher Liaison and staff member of the UT Performing Arts Center, shares her passion for the program: "The Living Newspaper project creates change, and not just through the advocacy of the students. It changes the way students look at the world and their own learning, it changes the way teachers view their students and the possibilities for learning, and it changes visitors to those classrooms who see the amazing work students and teachers are doing."

History of the Living Newspaper

The Living Newspaper stems from the 1935 Federal Theatre Project after FDR implemented the Works Project. It was structured like a city daily, with reporters and editors who sifted through current events, looking for subjects conducive to dramatization. The program, which had working class audiences, relied on lighting, multimedia, sound effects, satire, puppetry and visual projection to create cinematic appeal.

The Living Newspaper was brought to the University of Texas when graduate and undergraduate students produced and acted out a collaboratively written script at the Rapoport Center's inaugural conference on "Working Borders: Linking Debates About Insourcing and Outsourcing of Capital and Labor." To see a video of this performance, visit the conference agenda on the Rapoport Center website.

For more information about the Living Newspaper project, please visit the Humanities Institute website .