Dramatizing democracy : the living newspaper plays of the WPA Federal Theatre Project.

Abstract

This study focuses on the Living Newspaper plays of the WPA Federal Theatre Project (1935-1939). It includes as part of the study a selection of the publicity posters designed for the Living Newspaper productions by artists employed by the WPA Federal Art Project. It examines ways in which the Living Newspapers related to the mass media of the Depression era. It explores the ways in which cultural ideas and values around the themes of technology and modernity, citizenship, and the role of government in society are expressed in the written and visual texts of the plays and the poster images. This is a qualitative study and is interdisciplinary in its approach. It is grounded in the fields of cultural history and cultural studies, and is informed by literary studies and art history. The method I‘ve used is content assessment, which media historian Marion Marzolf described as a ―reading, sifting, weighing, and analyzing of evidence.‖