Sneak Peak at the Director's Notes for "Lady Susan"

So What is it with Readers’ Theatre Anyway?

by Michelle Lambeau

Verde Valley Theatre's production of Lady Susan presented as Readers’ Theatre is a first for the area. We look forward to discovering how Verde Valley theatre-goers respond to this break from the usual fare. Besides, the formula suits to the script in more ways than one.

Playreadings have long been a favorite hobby of mine.  Often our busy lives, jobs and commitments make it hard to find time to devote to the theatre. Playreadings offer a unique opportunity for like-minded amateurs to indulge in a few hours’ sharing of their passion and fun. And then there are the newcomers to acting who get their first taste of performing in an informal setting and gain from gleaning a bit of the group experience before taking on the challenges of an actual show. And who among the long-time participants would deny the satisfaction of getting a chance to sink their teeth into a part that they are unlikely to ever be cast in for want of such trifles as the right age, gender, physique—or even ability?

And for the broader community there is benefit, too. From remotest antiquity plays were meant to be experienced by the group as a whole, a ritual interaction between players and audience; not read from a book or viewed in isolation on a screen. And yet creating the experience today often calls for technical and financial means that exceed what all but the wealthiest of companies can afford. Thus it is that so many excellent works sink into obscurity: not for any want of merit, but from being turned down time after time by the budget and technical committees.  Public readings, carefully rehearsed, are a simple way to offer nearly any script to an audience in a manner close to the original intention—with added benefit in terms of pace, so vital to contemporary audiences who are unwilling to sit through lengthy changes of scene.

Over the course of many years spent attending and participating in playreadings, I have developed a theory of the practice which goes beyond the usual semi-circle of performers on stools to offer a spectacle designed to be visually more engaging, through use of costumes, props and stylized stage movement. And when VVT asked me to direct a show and selected my never-yet produced adaptation of Jane Austen, I was offered the perfect venue to try out the theory and the play. The cast has been stretched far to explore this new take on workshopping and performing a script, and has accommodated a flurry of rewrites and adaptations throughout the process—which made memorization undesirable, but demanded more in terms of flexibility.

Audience feedback will be the last important input to the process. Experts have and will continue to offer learned opinions, but theatre is first and foremost an undertaking by the community and for the community, so we all look forward to finding out whether the Verde Valley might care to see more of this (or not!) in the future.

~ Michelle Lambeau, Director