What is readers theatre?

If you have never been to a readers theatre performance, the first surprise is how little there is to look at — and how much there is to hear.

The form in one paragraph

In readers theatre the actors perform with their scripts in hand. They sit or stand side by side, in plain sight, often on stools or simple chairs. There is no built set, no scene change, usually no costume beyond a suggestion. Nothing is hidden, and nothing is illustrated for you. What remains is the writing, spoken by actors who have spent their rehearsal time on meaning rather than blocking — on where a line turns, where a pause belongs, whose voice carries the argument.

The result is a form that treats literature as literature. It suits plays, naturally, but it suits short stories, essays, letters, journals and poetry just as well, because it asks only that the words be worth hearing.

Why a company chooses it

Readers theatre is unusually honest about what a small company can do. It needs no theatre building, no scenery store, no stage crew. It travels. It can put a nineteenth-century novella and a play written last year on the same bill without pretending they belong to the same world. And it keeps the audience close to the text: when the reader looks up from the page, the room notices.

For a company working across a wide valley with a literary appetite, that is not a compromise. It is the point.

It is so simply done. Actors sitting side by side sharing an earthly soul-to-soul saga.

— Daily Freeman

How MMSC practises it

Our Readers Theater Group has given more than four hundred performances of plays, prose and poetry at venues throughout the Mid-Hudson Valley. A typical evening might pair a twentieth-century American drama with new work from a Hudson Valley writer, or set a Pulitzer Prize–winning play beside the poems that conversation started with.

• Typical venues St. Andrew’s Church, 163 Main Street, New Paltz; the Unison Arts & Learning Center on Mountain Rest Road; and SUNY New Paltz’s Parker Theater. Each production page names its venue.
• Seating Festival style throughout — there are no seat numbers, so arrive in good time and sit where you like.
• Reservations Call 845-255-3102 and we will hold seats for you under our “Hold A Seat For Me” policy until fifteen minutes before curtain.
• Ticket prices From $7 for individual literary offerings to $10–$12 for plays. Student prices are always available with a current student ID.
• Repertoire Classics of dramatic, poetic and narrative literature, alongside the work of recently published writers and new plays developed with SUNY New Paltz.

What an evening looks like

The company usually performs without an interval in a single continuous arc. Readers introduce a piece briefly, then begin. Between pieces there may be a poem, a letter, a passage that sets up the next work. Lighting is simple; sound is used only when the piece asks for it — our production of A Celebration of Old Time Radio is the exception, built as it is around live sound effects and vintage microphones.

Because everything is visible, audiences often report that they listen harder. There is no spectacle to watch instead.

Where to start

If you would like to see the form before committing to it, the clearest introduction is a literary evening rather than a full play — a programme of poetry, stories and essays. The Barbara Adams programme, The Ordinary Living, is a good example: poetry, stories and essays published in magazines and anthologies since 1972, read aloud across one evening.

Then look at the current season line-up, check ticket information, and find your way to us.

Other ways to hear it

Readers theatre is one of four programmes at MMSC. Our Theatre for Young Audiences company uses a participation format in which children join the action. The New Playwrights Program workshops new scripts with emerging writers. And the Vanguard Voices of the Hudson Valley journal puts the resulting texts in print.

Bringing a readers theatre programme to your venue

MMSC performs at churches, arts centres, libraries, schools and festivals. If you would like to discuss a programme for your organisation — a literary evening, a themed programme around a single author, or a production for students — call the office on 845-255-3102 or write to info@mmstageco.com.