ABSTRACT
This book focuses on Play Readings in the context of new play development. Many theatres, schools, libraries, museums, publishing houses, literary clubs, historical societies, and other organizations present Readings of classic or previously produced plays and musicals or selections from historical documents, texts, and speeches. The uses of these Nondevelopmental Readings are vast and varied. Red Bull Theater, Mint Theater Company, Shakespeare's Globe, and Project Shaw are among the many companies that present Nondevelopmental Readings. With Red Bull Theater's Revelation Readings, people have developed a following for rarely produced plays. People use them as an exploration for possible programming, and some readings have gone on to full productions. Readings can change my mind about what we produce. But they are a value in and of themselves. Many of the classic plays we do were written for the ear more than the eye, with beautiful, resonant language. Nondevelopmental Readings give audiences an increasingly rare opportunity to see plays with large casts.
