Art that connects us to our past — not just intellectually but emotionally and empathetically — is hard to come by.
For more than 30 years, Living Voices, a Seattle-based educational theater company, has been creating multimedia solo shows that blend a compelling fictionalized narrative with rigorous historical research, and presenting them all over the country.
Each show, performed by a single actor/teaching artist in front of on-screen materials compiled a la Ken Burns documentaries, is designed to spark curiosity and conversation about the people and events represented. Living Voices can pack a lot of story into these bite-sized shows, all around 30 minutes, which allows time after for a Q&A session between audience and performer.
In 2025 Living Voices is on track to present more than 600 shows, and this sort of access point to clear-eyed historical narratives, conscientiously crafted with a focus on voices underrepresented in history — not to mention performance opportunities for actors including, once upon a time, future Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone — feels more important than ever.
“History is our superpower,” said Rachael McClinton, Living Voices co-founder and artistic director. “We have to be strengthened by it. That’s what we’re here to do.”
Assembling the team
The inspiration for Living Voices came when company founders Rachael and Michael McClinton were working on a production of the play “The Diary of Anne Frank,” alongside a traveling Anne Frank exhibit, in Denver in 1990. Michael was directing, and Rachael was playing Frank.
“What moved us was the way students were connecting to the production,” Rachael said. But during the postshow Q&As, they found that the students lacked much context about what led to Frank’s family going into hiding from the Nazis.
After musing on how great it would be to tour their show — and realizing how expensive that would be — they started mulling alternatives.
“It was (Michael’s) idea to integrate film with solo theater,” Rachael said. Michael, who is now a senior producer at Cascade PBS, has worked in television production for years, and came up with the idea of developing a rich multimedia background (both visual and audio) that can set the scene and help tell the story.
The pair landed in Seattle in 1991, and it was then that they started devising Living Voices in earnest, Michael recalled. Their first show, “Through the Eyes of a Friend,” depicts Frank’s experiences from the point of view of one of her friends, a fictionalized composite character who serves as an eyewitness to Frank’s experiences before and after she’s in hiding.
While getting “Through the Eyes of a Friend” off the ground, the McClintons realized they needed a script doctor for the show. They met playwright Rachel Atkins through an actor working with Living Voices (and Atkins’ roommate), and the trio have been working together ever since. Atkins is now the company’s chief playwright and education director (and a “fabulous researcher,” according to Michael).
Bringing history to life
Today, Living Voices tours 14 shows, including “Through the Eyes of a Friend,” with settings such as the migrant farmworkers movement, Ellis Island, the Dust Bowl, Native American boarding schools and the Civil Rights Movement.
Even when tackling a more widely understood era, the Living Voices team try to bring a new perspective. Their show on the Klondike gold rush centers on a young woman because, Rachael said, 1 in 10 Klondikers were women. Meanwhile, a Black Continental soldier tells their story of the American Revolution.
“(Living Voices shows) are all about ordinary people living through extraordinary times,” Atkins said. “For me, it’s a matter of diving deep enough into the research that I can create an accurate character who can be experiencing things in such a way that an audience learns about that history without feeling like they’re being hit over the head with facts.”
Once they decide on a subject, they start thinking about who their central character will be. Then, Atkins starts researching, and Michael looks at places like the Library of Congress and the National Archives to get a sense of what archival materials may be available.
Finding materials can sometimes prove remarkably complicated, given the company’s focus on underrepresented historical voices.
Their two newest shows are companion pieces that tell stories of women in aviation during World War II. “Winning Her Wings,” which will debut in March, looks at the first women to fly for the United States military, and the recently opened “Fly For Freedom” explores Black women’s contributions to World War II aviation.
“Right now, I can go to the Library of Congress and I can find lots of nice pictures of WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots) and I can find nice pictures of the interiors of Boeing,” Michael said. “But clearly, it’s white people taking pictures of white people.”
When resources are low, community is key, and Living Voices works closely with community and historical organizations to build shows with authenticity and care.
For example, “Within the Silence,” about a young woman from Seattle’s Japanese community whose dreams of being a teacher are derailed when she’s incarcerated with her family during World War II, was created in collaboration with the Wing Luke Museum. “There are actually a lot of pictures that you can get from the government of the (incarceration) camps, but there were a lot more that we got from the community,” Michael said.
Living Voices’ collaborations aim to find meaningful perspectives, in addition to great photos. While working on “Fly For Freedom” during COVID, Atkins said, she had time to assemble an incredible set of advisers for the show, including Chauncey Spencer II, the son of Black aviation pioneer Chauncey Spencer, and Betty Reid Soskin, who worked for the Boilermakers during World War II and became a park ranger in her 80s to work at the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, Calif.
“Being able to work with those people and have them put eyes on my script to help make sure that I was really telling this history accurately, but in a compelling way … that has felt important and really satisfying to be able to have so much relevant community involvement in the development,” Atkins said.
Once the team has written the story and wrangled the appropriate archival assets, Michael edits them together with a judicious application of newly shot b-roll when necessary.
From the beginning, “the idea was to use the technology that was most commonly available,” Michael said. At first, they worked with just an actor, a VHS tape and, most often, a classroom TV on a rolling cart. Then came DVDs, thumb drives — now, they can send a link to their digital materials to the venue ahead of time.
Actors audition as they would for any other show, with Living Voices working with actors local and beyond, since the theater company tours all over the country.
After they’re cast, the preparation is a bit different from a standard rehearsal process.
Atkins creates a teaching curriculum for all Living Voices actors to help them prepare: a combination of readings, films, articles, documentaries and one-on-one tutorials, Rachael explained.
Actors rehearse in person or sometimes even via Zoom (if they live far away), then, ideally, they do a preview performance open to the public so they can get experience answering audience questions.
“It’s not just talking, it’s about listening,” Rachael said. “I often reflect (questions) back to the audience, because I’m not there to rattle off facts. I want them to create community and conversation through our time together.”
Remaining nimble is key. Living Voices shows can be performed anywhere: library community rooms for an audience of 15 people, The Morrison Center in Boise filled with some 3,000 middle schoolers, Navy bases and the headquarters of Ocean Spray cranberry juice.
“I lovingly say we’re the Slinky of theater companies,” Rachael said. “We can be very big, and we can be very small.”
Commitment to history
As of now, there are 658 total Living Voices performances scheduled for 2025, though Rachael said more shows will be scheduled later this year. Many of these shows are in private locations like schools or government buildings, but plenty are also open to the public, often in libraries, historical centers and museums. Locally, you can find their shows in spaces such as the Wing Luke Museum, the Museum of Flight, the Museum of History & Industry and the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park.
In addition to these contracts with schools and companies, Living Voices relies on grant funding from sources like Seattle’s 4Culture, the National Park Service and the National Endowment for the Arts, though that funding has become fraught in recent months.
A $10,000 NEA grant for outreach surrounding “Winning Her Wings” was rescinded in May amid Trump’s administration canceling NEA grants, and only very recently reinstated after Living Voices appealed and won. It’s not how they want to be spending their professional time, but the fight is worth it.
“The economic vitality of the community comes through the arts, and the NEA, in its long history, has never pulled funding from companies in good standing,” Rachael said. “We did everything … only to have us and other institutions have their funding pulled. No, it’s not going to prevent us from paying the rent and turning the lights on, but to me, it still means you are injuring the arts in a way that is petty and dangerous.”
In an unstable time for the arts and for the educational and government sectors, Living Voices remains committed to its audiences. And despite the national volatility, Rachael isn’t seeing interest in history dimming at all.
“What I’m seeing is a connection and a passion in teachers and students around subjects that used to be seen only as history, not as part of our ever-changing landscape,” Rachael said. “And that’s changing. So we can emphasize what history is telling us and then tell them, ‘Keep your eyes open and know that only we can allow history to repeat itself.’”
