Reader's Theatre

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(Note: The author has opted to use the words "Readers Theatre" although Reader's or Readers' and Theatre or Theater are often used)

WHAT IS READERS THEATRE? In all of its variety of presentation Readers Theatre has been called many things: Interpreters Theatre, Chamber Theatre, Platform Theatre, Concert Reading, Staged Reading, Drama of the Living Voice and (my favorite) Theatre of the Mind ...Theatre of the Imagination. It is called Readers Theatre by most. The Institute for Readers Theatre defines it as "a combination of oral interpretation and conventional theatre utilizing two or more readers ... to communicate the full intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic content of the literature to an audience". This Theatre of the Mind draws on all types of literature including plays, short stories, poems, letters, novels, essays, diaries, newspaper columns and even comic strips. Radio drama - in its insistence on audience participation through the imagination - is a close relative and progenitor of modern Readers Theatre.

THEATRE OF THE MIND From the audience's standpoint, the Readers Theatre experience is one of involvement. The audience participates with its imagination to provide the sets, costumes, and the props. Voice actors, when well-rehearsed, cause an audience to experience literature as they, the actors, experience it.

IN THE BEGINNING In the early days of Readers Theatre, the presentations were usually quite formal, staged with stools and reading stands, often in dinner jackets and floor-length dresses. Now Readers Theatre in its more ambitious forms can sometimes involve memorization and enhancements with costumes, special lighting, sound effects, and music. Most often, though, it is seen with actors dressed in black and seated on simple stools behind unobtrusive reading stands.

READERS THEATRE ON BROADWAY Lending status and respect to the form, The New York Drama Quartet, a readers theater ensemble created in the early 1950's by Charles Laughton, with Agnes Moorehead, Charles Boyer and Sir Cedric Hardwicke toured the US to exceptional acclaim with hundreds of performances of Don Juan In Hell from Shaw's Man and Superman. Subsequently, Broadway saw its share of this exciting genre in productions of more traditional theatre pieces including Spoon River Anthology, and Brecht on Brecht. The works of Pinter and Beckett have been produced as Readers Theatre as has the voice poem Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas. A.R.Gurney's well-known hit Love Letters is pure readers theater. Thornton Wilder's Our Town, though rarely seen as Readers Theater, is ideally structured for that style of production.

TODAY, Readers Theater is frequently used as a teaching tool at all levels of education. Religious RT ensembles are growing in number with stunning success adapting scriptural and liturgical materials. There is a growing move toward reestablishing this performance technique as a viable theater form in and of itself.

Written and submitted by Robert Demers, Editor-Publisher The Readers Theatre Digest http://www.readerstheatredigest.com original article archived at http://www.readerstheatredigest.com/archives/x01whatisrt.htm