Sydney reads from Dear Medora — 2007

I love reading aloud!  I love doing it and I love to listen to other people do it and I love to incorporate it into the teaching/learning opportunities of various aspects of my life.  Today our Community Historians had an opportunity to participate in a Reader’s Theater experience focused on “Washington at War:  The Evergreen State in WWI.”

Our guest speaker was Lorraine McConaghy, a historian who works at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle.  She talked to us about the process of creating a reader’s theater piece by utilizing original sources – in this case, excerpts from writings, diaries, speeches and correspondence.  She suggested that we consider developing a reader’s theater experience from our own research projects – perhaps presenting such a piece to local community groups or schools and asking “listeners” to participate in a significant historic event by reading the script aloud.

Early IWW Poster

As an example, she brought along a script she has developed concerning “Washington at War: The Evergreen State in WWI.”  We sat around a large table – fifteen or twenty of us – and read for forty minutes.  We read the words of politicians and labor leaders, of journalists and social activists – diverse opinions about a controversial subject in a nation as polarized 100 years ago as it is today.  It was eye-opening and familiar, both.

Topics covered the period between 1914 and 1919 and included immigration, wartime industrialization, women’s rights, social change, radical labor, epidemic disease, and worldwide turmoil.  We even sang – songs of the period like “Over There” and “Mademoiselle from Armentieres.” (It was no surprise that we all knew the tunes and the words; our gray heads give evidence that we are probably separated from that War only by a generation or two.  We probably learned those songs from our own parents or grandparents.  I couldn’t help wondering what a school group would make of them.)

Shoalwater Storytellers, 2013

Fun!  Fun!  Fun!  But then… I knew that it would be.  I was doing Reader’s Theater back in the early eighties and found it one of the best ways to put the ‘story’ back in hi’story’ for both participants and audiences.  Perhaps you remember the Shoalwater Storytellers (1981-2013-ish)?  A little different take on the form – we had costumes (hats) and props (sticks and barrels) in addition to scripts – but the idea was the same.  To research a topic and use original, contemporary sources to give voice to history.  Three cheers!!  (Did I say I loved it?)