Readers' Theatre as a History Teaching Tool

Abstract

LAST YEAR marked the one-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the first women's rights convention held at Seneca Falls, New York. We wanted to celebrate the event with a dramatic presentation for our students. Lacking the skill to write a compelling play, we decided to put on a readers' theatre version of the convention. Such productions are engaging and relatively easy to stage as the actors read from scripts, usually without costumes or scenery. Readers' theatre also allows greater control over historical accuracy than a conventional play. Since history is only occasionally dramatic, the demands of theatre, whether on stage or in films and videos, raise historians' fears of inaccuracy and a fast and loose use of primary sources. The problem of interpretation also arises, as the PBS production Liberty! The American Revolution' shows with its oversimplification of a complex event. In looking to the Seneca Falls Convention, we wanted an interpretation that was frankly celebratory. We believed the convention began efforts by generations of women and men to improve the status of women. Their efforts were only partly realized in 1920 after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote in federal