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Readers Theatre will hold auditions for its production of A. R. Gurney’s The Dining Room on January 13 in the Lakeside Commons Classroom. Appear at 10 am and plan to stay until noon. No preparation is necessary; you will be asked to read excerpts from the script. Please bring your calendars to identify any conflicts with the morning rehearsals (January 20, 27, February 3, 10, 17, 24, and March 3), the dress rehearsal (evening of March 9), or the performance (evening of March 10).
Director Bruce McConachie hopes to cast three men and three women for the first half of the play, and another six readers for the second half. They will read the parts of more than 50 people – all of them belonging to the socioethnic group known as WASPs — who sit around a stately dining table over the decades. Readers Theatre will use the Chapel for The Dining Room performance. Because the readers will not use microphones, the audience will be limited to guests of the performers and residents who are on our mailing list.
For more information, or to arrange an audition before January 13, contact Bruce (his email address and phone number may be found in MyErickson under Resident Directory).
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Page Contents
Our Most Recent Productions
Our first play of the 2025-2026 season was 12 Angry Jurors. Based oon the classic 12 Angry Men. Readers of both genders performed the play in the Chapel on the evening of November 18.
Final Play of the Season
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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Other Dramatic Opportunities
In September of 2025 Readers Theatre sponsored seven sessions for reading aloud The Great Gatsby in celebration of its 100th anniversary. Without auditions or rehearsals, about two dozen residents participated, some of whom were then cast in 12 Angry Jurors. A short discussion followed each session, along with a party at the end.
On December 8, 2025, four Readers Theatre actors performed a dramatic reading of O. Henry’s short story, The Gift of the Magi, for a group of Arbor Ridge residents. We hope to make other presentations there every three months or so.
All About Readers Theatre
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.