Something new for an old art form

ACT Readers Theatre has breathed new life into local theatre by providing a means of offering a greater variety of theatrical offerings for audiences as well as novice actors. Readers’ theatre is a staged reading of a play with few or no technical aspects. Actors read from scripts, but they still “act.” There may be simple movement and a narrator reads stage directions describing any action or location information necessary to help the audience understand what is going on. Some more elaborate productions have included sound effects and simple staging.

No memorization is required and production may include no more than two or three rehearsals. Readers theatre permits more individuals to experience acting and it permits the performance of many more plays.

The quintessential readers’ theatre script is probably A.R. Gurney's poignant and romantic play Love Letters. A male and a female actor read letters exchanged over a lifetime by friends and sometime intimates. In less than two hours, we see Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner over a period of 50 years, as the author carries them from second grade through the trauma of adulthood, marriage, divorce and middle age.

The ease of performance resulted in productions where the participating actors changed weekly. Most noteworthy was a 1989 Broadway production at the Edison Theatre, where it ran for 96 performances. It opened with Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards. Other paired performers included Lynn Redgrave and John Clark, Stockard Channing and John Rubinstein, Jane Curtin and Edward Hermann, Kate Nelligan and David Dukes, Polly Bergen and Robert Vaughan, Timothy Hutton and Elizabeth McGovern, Swoosie Kurtz and Richard Thomas, Elaine Stritch and Cliff Robertson, Nancy Marchand and Fritz Weaver, and Robert Foxworth and Elizabeth Montgomery.

ACT's first staging of Love Letters featured two different couples in two performances each in the Sparta School Auditorium: husband and wife Stephen and Holly Ray on Aug. 22 and 23, 2003, and Brad Jenkins and Susan Landreth on Aug. 29 and 30. Robbie Presnell and Mary Jane Ciraco reprised the roles at a readers' theatre production in the Alleghany Library Conference Room Jan. 11, 2007.

While plays written for full staging are not as easily adapted to readers’ theatre format, they all benefit from the ease of production.

ACT Readers Theatre productions are staged in the library meeting room every other month. More recently, a production was also staged in the Historic 1908 Courthouse in Independence, VA. Past productions at the Alleghany Public Library include:

Sept. 1, 2005, Paula Joines directed "Grace and Glorie"
Nov. 3, 2005, Tom Rector directed "Victoria"
Jan. 12, 2006, Robbie Presnell directed "The Housekeeper"
Mar. 9, 2006, Donny McCall directed "Two Rooms"
May 4, 2006, Bob Bamberg directed "Eleemosynary"
July 13, 2006, Paula Joines directed "The Scarlett O'Hara Complex"
Sept 14, 2006, Dudley Carpenter directed "The Odd Couple"
Nov 19, 2006, Brad Jenkins directed "On Golden Pond"
Jan. 11, 2007, Robbie Presnell directed "Love Letters"

Future productions include:

Mar. 8, 2007, Paula Joines is slated to direct "Dairy Queen Days"
July 12, 2007, Brad Jenkins is slated to direct "Inherit the Wind"

ACT Readers Theatre is organized in cooperation with the Alleghany County Library and the Alleghany County Arts Council with partial funding by the NC Arts Council Grassroots Grant.