Reading

I know I have asked this before....but when did "staged readings" become the standard?

Readings.... I love readings. 

You know the sitting around a living room, or sitting at a table, or doing it in theater even...at a music stand...but a reading.  You know...a reading is a chance for a writer to hear what they have or for a director or theater to hear it out loud to see if it's a piece that works.

What a reading is NOT...is a way to do a "production" without giving anything to the actors.

When you throw production elements into a reading...you give the audience the assumption that this IS a production.  But yet, the actors are given either no or very little direction.  So who loses in this concept of a reading...as usual..the people who are the face of the said reading...the actors.


We are left floundering....audience expecting a full performance....with out the investment of time and energy in the actor's part of the process.

It's why I always ask, and probably why no one asks me to do readings anymore, "Is this a REAL reading? Is this in a living room, at stands?"


I've had 2 reading of the piece Rod and I are working on...and we made it CRYSTAL CLEAR that they were readings...the second time, we even told the audience that we were trying out some of the physical stuff, but that it was still....A READING.....

Ok.  Sorry....I know I am yelling...but please stop using actors like this.....sigh....Rant over.