Readers Theater

Readers theater is a genre of drama in which actors hold scripts, staging is kept simple, scenery is limited to things such as stools and ladders, and costumes (if used at all) are little more than articles of clothing (e.g., a hat, a scarf) intended to suggest, rather than literally represent, a character. Certain qualitative researchers have used the readers theater genre to display their data.

The use of the readers theater genre to display data is part of a larger movement within both the theater and research communities to translate qualitative data into drama. Different names (e.g., performance ethnography, documentary theater, data-based readers theater) have been used to characterize the products that have been created, and each form of data-based theater has its own unique characteristics.

The most obvious defining characteristic of the readers theater genre is the convention of actors holding scripts during performances. This convention is used even in well-rehearsed professional productions where actors have memorized scripts because readers theater is by design a stylized, rather than realistic, form of drama. Readers theater productions exhibit other forms of stylization as well. When actors enter or exit a scene, for example, they are unlikely to literally walk on or off the stage. More often than not, they simply turn toward or away from the audience to symbolize entering or leaving, respectively.

Why this focus on symbolization and stylization? Theater scholars indicate that readers theater is a presentational, rather than representational, type of theater. Whereas representational forms of theater attempt to portray action realistically, presentational forms ask audience members to fill in what has been intentionally omitted onstage and, in the process, to co-construct with the actors the meaning of the work. Some social scientists who advocate the use of the readers theater genre to display qualitative data have even compared the holding of scripts and the genre's other stylization techniques to the distancing devices that playwright Bertolt Brecht used to ensure that audiences do not get so emotionally caught up in his plays that they forget to think and analyze.

This emphasis on promoting thinking and analysis as well as empathic understanding makes readers theater an especially appropriate form of drama for use in academic contexts. Of course, the genre also offers a more practical benefit in that because scripts do not need to be memorized and staging, scenery, and costumes are simple (or nonexistent), a readers theater script can be rehearsed relatively quickly and presented at research conferences and in other venues where the performance of data can be used to stimulate a rich discussion of the issues implicit in the script.