Ripped: The Living Newspaper Festival

American Blues Theater’s Ripped: The Living Newspaper Festival is an annual fund-raising event for American Blues and began in 2009. Since that first edition, they have presented 14 events with nearly 400 artists. American Blues Theater’s Ripped is based on the 1930s Works Progress Administration (WPA) program, The Federal Theatre Project’s the Living Newspaper, which brought Orson Welles, Arthur Miller and Clifford Odets into public attention. The Federal Theatre Project wrote and presented a number of Living Newspapers on social issues of the day during the 1930s. At Ripped, new works are ripped from today’s headlines and presented in staged readings by Chicago’s leading playwrights and directors.