Living Newspapers were plays written by teams of researchers-turned-playwrights. These men and women clipped articles from newspapers about current events, often hot button issues like farm policy, syphilis testing, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and housing inequity. These newspaper clippings were adapted into plays intended to inform audiences, often with progressive or left-wing themes. Triple-A Plowed Under, for instance, attacked the United States Supreme Court for killing an aid agency for farmers. These politically-themed plays quickly drew criticism in Congress.

Problems with the FTP and Congress intensified when the United States Department of State objected to the FTP's new play Ethiopia, about Haile Selassie and his nation's struggles against Benito Mussolini's invading Italians. The U.S. government soon mandated that the FTP, a federal government agency, could not depict foreign heads of state on the stage, for fear of diplomatic backlash. Ethiopia was a Living Newspaper, a new kind of theater devised by Flanagan and her creative team.

Although the undisguised political invective in the Living Newspapers sparked controversy, they also proved popular with audiences. As an art form, the Living Newspaper is perhaps the FTP's most well-known work.

The FTP's legacy can also be found in a new generation of theater artists whose careers began with the FTP. Arthur Miller, Orson Welles, John Houseman, Martin Ritt, Elia Kazan, Marc Blitzstein, Arthur Arent and Abe Feder all became established, in part, through their work in the FTP. Blitzstein, Houseman and Welles collaborated on the controversial FTP production of The Cradle Will Rock.


The FTP was the most expensive of the Federal One projects, consuming 29.1 percent of Federal One's budget.

On June 30, 1939, the FTP was ended when its funding was canceled, largely attributed to strong Congressional objections to the overtly left-wing political tones of many FTP productions.