THE MAGIC OF PLAY READING CLUB - BY BRIDGETT MARTINEZ
Honoring my inner child has always come easy to me. I rewatch High School Musical often, I still enjoy a cosmic brownie, and I have plans to complete a full miniature dollhouse. But underneath the silly things, I recognize a longstanding love for two things: stories and gathering. I was an avid reader and writer, always reading above my grade level and writing chapters on chapters of my action-sci-fi-fantasy series about a group of best friends that are fairy pop stars that defeat evil (unrelated, I loved K-Pop Demon Hunters.) I was also the kid starting clubs on the playground that always seemed to have a clear agenda, goals, and action items that I would organize my friends to carry out. So when last year I started a mobile drama bookshop with an accompanying play reading club… Let’s just say my parents were not surprised.
This idea came to me after years of trying to get a group of people together to read plays with me. I was tired of staring at my half-read shelf of scripts and not knowing where to start. And I specifically craved the fun part of theatre school, where you get to spend hours reading and dissecting a juicy script with a group of other theatre nerds. And while I do go to see many productions (both on my own and with a friend), I was starting to lose my ability to articulate the thoughts, feelings, and sensations I had when experiencing art. So, I made it everybody’s problem.
At first, I had no clue who would even show up to such a gathering. So I partnered up with my good friend McKenzie who is also an artist and runs a super fun DIY art space called the Merrit Club. She also yearns to get people together to have a low-commitment, goofy, artsy time. And that is exactly what our play reading club is. I personally love to promote it as “book club, but without the homework!”
Our first play reading club was for “John Proctor is the Villain” and we somehow crammed twenty people around a collection of tables within McKenzie’s art studio. Some people brought their own copy of the script, others bought one from my shelf, and some didn’t even have a script and instead listened to the reading while they crocheted or doodled. Afterwards, everyone was invited to stay back for an informal discussion. We have kept this exact structure every month and it’s made clear that no one is obligated to stay the entire time. Additionally, I don’t plan any questions in advance. I tried reading the play ahead of time to come up with discussion questions, but I found that it also kind of ruined my own experience. I love reacting to the script for the first time with everyone else in the room. Instead, the discussion is led with open-ended questions like “what moments stuck out to you, for good or bad reasons? What questions do you still have? What do you think the play was about?” And it’s off to the races from there!
Our goal with developing the play reading club was to keep it low-stakes and focused on the text. How do we each imagine the world of the play when it’s not prescribed to us through the lens of a specific production? Sometimes (more often than not) we don’t have the “perfect” casting for a role; what changes about a character when it’s read by someone older, younger, or of a different gender than what we’d expect? These are all the things I nerd out about as a director, actor, dramaturg, etc. etc. without the pressure of working on a production for 6+ weeks. Along with that, play reading club allows us to explore scripts that might not ever get produced locally for any number of reasons. Cleveland is 100% a theatre city, but all theatre communities have their limits of what can be produced. On the flip side of that, play reading club may also introduce us to scripts or playwrights that could be exciting for our local theaters, we just might not have heard of them before!
The beauty of our club is that it’s not just for people active in the theatre community. Yes we have actors, playwrights, and directors there, but we also have theatre lovers who don’t perform, former drama club thespians who don’t have time to do shows anymore, and people who don’t even do theatre but love reading! It’s an ever-changing group of people who show up, put down that damn phone (guilty) for a couple hours and get lost in a story together. The longer we do it, the less I care if two people come or twenty; it’s a space we create together that is unique every time and stands alone in a pure love for words on a page.
If this sounds like your idea of a good time, I invite you to join our next meeting on Saturday, September 26 at 11:30am for a reading of 1536 by Ava Pickett. Follow us @dramaclubcoffee and @merritclub for all of the updates, or email me at info@dramaclubcoffee.com if you want to join the newsletter! We welcome everyone to rediscover their love for reading, theatre, and being in community together.