Reader's theatre is a style of theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 in which the actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

s do not memorize their lines. Rather, they either go through their blocking

Blocking

Blocking may refer to:- Telecommunications and computing :*Block , a sequence of bytes or bits, having a nominal length*Block , technical measures to restrict users' access to certain internet resources...

 holding scripts

Manuscript

A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

and reading off their lines, or else sit/stand together on a stage and read through the script together. In Reader's theatre, actors use vocal expression to help the audience understand the story rather than visual storytelling such as sets, costumes, and intricate blocking.

Theatre in Education

According to some drama teachers, plays have built-in strategies to help students improve their reading skills. The acting out of dialogue causes readers to work more closely with the text to project and interpret meaning into the reading experience. Consequently, students gain improvement in vocabulary, comprehension and retention. Reading in a small group provides reading role models which is also proven to improve reading skills in students. Research has shown that Reader's Theatre can improve reading fluency, word choice and comprehension.

One of the foremost authors on Readers Theatre was Dr. Leslie Irene Coger. Dr. Coger taught for most of her career at Missouri State University and wrote the book, Readers Theatre Handbook: A Dramatic Approach to Literature.

External links

http://www.playbooks.com/free

http://www.aaronshep.com

http://www.storycart.com/scripts_free.php

http://www.scriptsforschools.com

http://www.thebestclass.org/rtscripts.html

http://www.authorsreaderstheatre.com