First Living Newspaper Performances Take to the Stage

In the fall of 2006, five high school students brought to life the stories of more than twenty individuals from around the globe, victims of some of the most horrendous human rights violations. Got Rights?: The Chronicles of Stolen Youth, created by students at St. Stephen’s Academy, was the first performance in the brand-new Living Newspapers Across the Disciplines program, a collaboration of the Humanities Institute, the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, and the Performance as Public Practice program at UT Austin. At two performances in October on the St. Stephen’s campus and one performance at UT in December, Troupe St. Stephens dramatized the complicated scenarios of children’s rights abuses around the world, including the U.S.

The most recent performance of Got Rights? was held in the Eidman Courtroom at the UT School of Law on Saturday, December 2, a moving close to the Rapoport Center’s Lister Conference on Human Rights. A discussion with the cast and representatives from Austin-area children’s rights organizations — including Gena VanOsselaer, Executive Director of Austin Children Shelter, Teresa Troxel, Volunteer Coordinator at CASA of Travis County, and Susan McDowell, Executive Director of LifeWorks — followed the show.

The process for creating Got Rights? was very similar to the production of the original Living Newspapers in the U.S. during the Great Depression, and has had similar results — to raise awareness and spark dialogue about significant social issues in the news today. The five student actors (Zach Hailey, Lindsay Kuo, Delaney Ozmun, Mary Beth Reed, and Trey Townsend), one student stage manager (Marjorie Maxwell), one faculty adviser (Michelle Ludwig), and one UT Austin graduate student consultant (Ann David), researched global children’s rights issues like child labor, children soldiers, the foster care system, and child prostitution, for several weeks before creating a script from non-fiction sources.

Throughout the 2006-7 school year, teachers at five different high schools and two colleges in Austin and Round Rock led their students in researching, writing, and staging similar documentary plays about significant human rights issues of interest to young people. Got Rights? was the first opportunity for Austinites to see and respond to this innovative approach to teaching human rights history and citizenship through performance, but others quickly followed.

In November and December, 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, Mr. Jibladze and two graduate consultants, Meg Sullivan and Brian Gatten, encouraged students to explore the real-life stories born of economic philosophies. Students wrote scripts collaboratively in small groups; they then captured the scenes on film to screen for their peers and teachers at the end of the semester.

In her Humanities 1301 course at Austin Community College, teacher and Comparative Literature grad student, Margaret Woodruff-Wieding, spent the entire semester introducing Living Newspapers to her students. By the end of the fall, the thirty students of all ages, races, and educational backgrounds had crafted three scripts detailing the complexities of current immigration issues. They performed these scripts in a Readers’ Theater format (actors reading from scripts with slides as a backdrop), for their peers and program staff the second week of December.

The New Year saw the creation of four more Living Newspaper projects. Patricia Smith at Connolly High School in Round Rock will lead off in January with her public speaking class. In April, Ashley Robinson (English, LBJ High School), Patrick Schmidt (English, Round Rock High School), and Jason Flowers (history, LASA) began the process with their students.

On May 12th, the Humanities Institute at UT Austin hosted an End-of-the-Year Showcase to celebrate the inaugural year of the Living Newspapers Across the Disciplines program at the Off Center, the Rude Mechanicals' performance warehouse, in East Austin. The evening of student written and performed theater included live performances by students in Margaret Woodruff-Wieding’s Introduction to Humanities Class at Austin Community College, as well as a filmed staging of the play Got Rights? performed by students from Michelle Ludwig’s Troupe St. Stephen’s. Proceeds from a suggested donation benefited LifeWorks, a non-profit serving Austin youth and families in crisis.