Ask a Hillsdale College theatre major to do something strange and the odds are good they’ll say “yes.”
Theatre Honorary Alpha Psi Omega recently held its second staged reading of a play script this year. It has previously held “APOcalypse,” a series of skits and improvised scenes. But this is a new project, less formal than a stage production and more structured than “APOcalypse.” The first staged reading occurred last semester, with various members reading through the script of “Heartbreak House” by George Bernard Shaw. This semester, the group read Oliver Everett Durivage’s comedy “The Stage-Struck Yankee.”
“The way it happened last semester was that Aaron [Pomerantz] and Jenn [Shadle] read [the play] for class,” junior Megan Scott, the current secretary, said. “They sent the script out and asked if anyone would be interested in doing it. Everybody read through the script and said that yeah, it sounded bizarre—but it sounded fun.”
The staged readings—where each actor is assigned a character and reads aloud, together, from the script—offer APO members and theatre enthusiasts alike a chance to explore new plays, new methods, to branch out from the standard fare of the production season.
“It’s not theatre,” senior Aaron Pomerantz, APO president, said. “It’s more like a radio drama in a lot of ways. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a chance to see things done that you wouldn’t otherwise.”
Because a staged reading eliminates the costumes, props, and myriad paraphernalia of a standard production, it gives more freedom to both the actors and the audience. Voice, facial expression, and emotional inference are critical.
“In some ways, there’s less room for improvisation,” Scott said. “There’s no set, no costumes, no motions. But you have the script in front of you, which gives you a lot of room to play around with feelings and vocal expression without necessarily having the script memorized.”
But this sense of dynamism isn’t limited to the actors. The audience is involved in the play much more directly and intimately than in most stage productions.
“You just need a place to sit and people to watch you,” senior Connor Gleason explained. “Some people call it ‘found space theatre.’ And dimensionally, it’s different. One reason that a person goes to a play, as opposed to seeing a movie, is because there’s supposedly audience interaction. It’s sometimes very subtle, but in a staged reading, all that subtlety is thrown out the door. They’re having fun. We’re having fun.”
This means, though, that some plays—particularly those heavily dependent on physicality or prop-rich environments—are out of consideration.
“Some of the plays that I hope they’ll eventually do are just not practical to do on the stage,” Pomerantz said, “or at least not at a college. But they would be great to do as a reading.”
According to Gleason, the best plays for a reading are simple, short, and exciting. And, with a shorter-length play, people who are normally behind the scenes get their hour to strut and fret upon the stage.
“It gives us an opportunity to work on things that we wouldn’t be able to otherwise,” said senior Jenn Shadle, vice president of APO. “It gives members of our honorary a chance to do new things. A lot of [crew members] don’t have the opportunity to act and this lets them try it out without investing too much time.”
In the end, each staged reading is a microcosm of personality, culture, and literature. When asked what exhortation he might have for those unsure of attending a reading, he said: go.
“It’s a simple way to get cultured,” Gleason said. “And it’s really fun. Bring friends because you’ll have a lot of great inside jokes and a lot of great outside jokes. Go for the moments and go for your friends and go for the laughs.”
