Update from the Workers Theatre Movement Project Team about the play project taking place at Hope Street Theatre in 2025.

Hi all,

This is an update opening up submissions to the Living Newspaper part of the project and giving more information to actors on how to get involved. Another piece of good news! We have received another funding boost from the Lipman-Milliband Trust and so should be able to look for another couple of venues as well as our already booked Hope Street Theatre performances June 6th – 8th of next year.

For those interested in writing for the Living Newspaper

The Workers Theatre Movement used Living Newspapers to give their take on the news items of the day, dramatizing them in a punchy, engaging way in order to get the message across to the audience, who were mainly non-theatre goers.

A typical “Living Newspaper” would include up to 6-8 separate topical sketches, linked together by a variety of devices, including song, poetry, Newspaper callers, quotes from politicians etc.

The style was almost cabaret/review. Humour was strong through satire and parody of genres and styles. Game shows, gangster movies, adverts, Nature documentaries – these can be useful to put across a social comment in a humorous way.

We would love to have a bit of humour in our modern Living Newspaper, even if the subject matter is serious. We’d also like to have local items as well as national/international, and items that don’t take politics too narrowly – eg; environmental, social trends in modern life. Think about things in our mad modern world that make you angry and how you could get your own back using drama. Or things that make you laugh and are ripe for satire.

The greatest thing to avoid is submitting something that’s too long. Once we have the Living Newspaper strand sorted out, we may ask for longer pieces inspired by the WTM (They did a lot of other types of sketches and plays) but for now we’re looking for topical, short and punchy items for the Living Newspaper. Probably anything from 3- 15 minutes long but unlikely to be longer. Seeing an aspect from one person’s point of view, or one angle, can be much more fruitful than trying to sum up the universe or completely dot the i and cross the T of a whole subject. A lot of the WTM work was performed to transient audiences at factory gates, Union Halls etc and there wasn’t time to beat about the bush.

Please Note: If groups rather than individuals want to have a go at putting together a whole Living Newspaper or several linked bits, that’s fine. Use it as a project for your group and submit.

Fancy submitting a piece?

Probably best to submit direct to tomm562002[at]yahoo.com but info[at]valleytheatre.co.uk is fine as well.

Still unsure of what we want? It might be best to attend our workshops which will start late Feb/early March and which will look at real examples of “Living Newspapers” and give more background about the Workers Theatre Movement.

These workshops will be equally useful for actors and writers as well as those who are just generally interested.

Interested in Acting?

The Living Newspapers were acted out by troupes, so it’s ensemble acting with groups of say 6-8 actors taking responsibility for delivering a whole Living Newspaper (maybe 45 – 60 minutes long). Ability to be flexible and act different styles and characters is a plus. Challenging but rewarding as well.

We’ll probably audition early spring for the June shows but again attendance at the workshops would help people get an idea of what’s needed.

As part of the project, we’re also putting on a more traditional short play, called “Unity”, set one night in a small town hall during a 30s Workers Theatre Movement Group rehearsal and showing the tensions, personal and political, that arise in the group.

More on this when we announce auditions.

Apologies if this is a bit long-winded. Just thought people might want a bit more detail. By all means email us if you need to know more.

We might have a meeting in town early in the new year for those who are interested in getting involved and do a Q and A. Would that interest people?

Please share this with anyone you think might be interested and get in touch if you want to express an interest.

Cheers, the Workers Theatre Movement Project Team