READERS THEATRE
The action of the play covers a range of timely topics: the responsibility of society to “problematic” teenagers, the importance of listening to those who disagree with you, the power of one person to effect change, and the need to understand how the judicial system works. Our production will give both men and women the opportunity to sit on the jury.
For more information, or to schedule an audition at a different time, contact the director, David Levin.
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Public Reading of The Great Gatsby
Readers Theatre tried something new this fall: celebrating the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, by sponsoring a public reading of the entire novel. Riderwood residents, including many new to Readers Theatre, volunteered to read one of the 44 parts of the book during seven morning sessions in September in the Town Center library. Short discussions followed each reading.
Readers Theatre is exploring ways to broaden the opportunities at Riderwood to experience the joys of reading great literature aloud, as we have been doing with our plays for the past three seasons.
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Our latest production
We’re still basking in the success of our performance of Noël Coward’s Hay Fever, a light comedy from 1925. An audience of 60 enjoyed the play in Maryland Hall, along with an afternoon tea during the intermission.
Plays for the 2025-2026 season
12 Angry Jurors. We’re basing our fall production on Reginald Rose’s play 12 Angry Men, adapted so jurors can be either men or women; resident David Levin will direct. A New York Times reviewer said it was “difficult to recall a more incisively revealing” depiction of jury-room drama. Auditions for 12 actors will be held October 7 at 10 am in the Montgomery Station classroom, with weekly rehearsals until the performance on November 18.
The Dining Room. In the winter we’ll be performing a play by A. R. Gurney and directed by Bruce McConachie, our artistic director. The action is a mosaic of interrelated scenes that create an in-depth portrait of a vanishing species: the upper-middle class WASP. Auditions for 3 male and 3 female actors will be held January 6, with weekly rehearsals until the performance on February 24.
Fireflies. Our spring production, to be directed by resident Barbara O’Malley, is a play by Matthew Barber that features the prospect of a late-life romance between a retired schoolteacher in a Texas village and a smooth-talking drifter. The whole town is talking! Auditions for 2 male and 2 female actors will be held March 31, with weekly rehearsals until the performance on May 19.
Note: With the disruptions caused by the Village Square repositioning and continuing difficulties with audio equipment, Readers Theatre will not be producing any of these three plays for the general public.
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Do you enjoy reading plays? Have you ever performed in live theatre? Maybe, like many folks our age, you’d like to play a role, but you’re afraid you’ll forget your lines. Not to worry. Our group sits at tables with scripts in-hand and enacts dramatic characters for each other and our friends. Our performances are closer to radio drama than fully staged theatre.
Readers Theatre is an open group of Riderwood residents who enjoy choosing plays together, working with directors to audition for roles and rehearse them, reading them with full vocal characterization, then discussing our productions. We hope that our subtitle for the group, “The Play’s the Thing” (borrowed from Hamlet), conveys the idea that we want to have some fun with our shows, even when we do serious drama.
We began Readers Theatre in the Fall of 2022. Our opening
production was The Skin of Our Teeth, a comedy by Thornton 
Wilder, followed the next February by The Mousetrap, an
Agatha Christie mystery. At this writing, we plan to produce Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler in May.
Our second season began with a public performance of Under Milkwood. Next we tackled Arthur Miller’s classic play, The Crucible, followed by Jean Giraudoux’s satirical comedy, The Madwoman of Chaillot. That summer we gave a public performance of The Revlon Girl, by Neil Anthony Docking.
For 2024-2025 we began with Continuity, by Bess Wohl, in another public performance. Our winter play was Appropriate, by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Noël Coward’s Hay Fever closed the season.
A volunteer Steering Committee together with an Artistic Director head the Readers Theatre group. They select the plays we are doing and determine our casting policy. We are committed to racial- and gender-flexible casting to ensure a broad choice of plays and maximum participation. Double-casting also allows us to spread out the rehearsals
and do two separate productions for each half of a long show.
After a short audition process, each cast meets separately for five or six rehearsals on Tuesday mornings. before performing their half of the play, usually with the cast for the other half as their primary audience. A Monday dress rehearsal prepares the cast before they perform the play on a Tuesday.
Please contact Bruce McConachie, Artistic Director,or Maggie Hayes, Steering Committee chair, for more information or about joining the group.