This article, by Colette Rouhier, appeared in the US edition of The Guardian on July 13, 2015
I’d never been tempted to join a book group. I’m a slow reader and it seems like I’ve always got too much on to plough through a different novel each month. I think of myself as someone with a fairly decent knowledge of English literature, with one exception – until a couple of years ago I knew next to nothing about plays. I could sometimes connect a title to a particular playwright, but had no idea of plots or themes, and wasn’t that familiar with the writers. Continue reading Book groups have had their day – it’s time to start a script-reading group →
Scientific Proof
This article describes a study conducted in 2005. The full text of the study appears in Beneficial Effects of Reading Aloud, and referenced in the introduction to Nintendo’s Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day.
READING ALOUD FLUENTLY in native or foreign languages and doing mathematical calculations quickly are extremely important for the development of the brain, according to a university study on human brains.
Continue reading Reading Aloud Is Good for the Brain →
The folllowing essay was contributed by long-time Charlotte reader David Watkins, now far off in Marietta, GA, leading a group of his own.
This question can lead us off in many directions. Perhaps a good place to start is a brief discussion of why attend plays.
I believe that George Gray said it in a way that cannot be improved upon.
“ Great plays well played engage the collective consciousness of an audience from the opening line and carry us beyond what we know to be actors on a stage to another dimension of time and place imagined in a playwright’s mind and played out in our own—a mystic duality that enthralls us, holds us captive to the final curtain, and sends us away transformed, enlightened, emotionally exhausted, spiritually transformed, completely satisfied.” Continue reading Why Read Plays Aloud with Others? →
Reading Plays with Friends for Fun and Cultural Enrichment
Cold Reads/International 