Readers Theater

Have you con­sid­ered doing Read­ers The­ater in your class­room or assem­bly per­for­mance? It’s a fun and instruc­tion­al way to get inside of a book, involv­ing stu­dents first­hand in dia­logue, action, and plot. Here’s an arti­cle about read­ers the­ater I wrote for School Library Jour­nal a few years ago: “Have You Heard the Word? For a low-bud­get way to get kids wild about read­ing, try read­ers the­ater.”

As I wrote in the arti­cle, my “expe­ri­ences led me to cre­ate Authors Read­ers The­atre (ART) in 2006 with fel­low writ­ers Sharon Creech, Wal­ter Dean Myers, and Sarah Weeks. Func­tion­ing as a kind of reper­to­ry the­ater group with an evolv­ing core of author-per­form­ers, we have been per­form­ing read­ers the­ater all over the country…”

Authors Read­ers The­ater is still going strong. For infor­ma­tion about the troupe, please vis­it Sarah Weeks’ website.

There are two free read­ers the­ater scripts on my web­site: one is for Ereth’s Birth­day and the oth­er is for The True Con­fes­sions of Char­lotte Doyle. They may be just the spark you need to involve more stu­dents in the joys of read­ing. I encour­age you to give read­ers the­ater a try, if you haven’t already.