Lamb Theatre's play-reading club: Don't skip the script

"It's a lot of use of your imagination," said Brock Bourek, manager of theater operations for Sioux City's Lamb Theatre and the leader of its play-reading club, which they've deemed Page to Stage. "You have to use a lot of subtext, and you have to try and figure out what's going on, what's the underlying message being said, and these things that are being said without being said." 

"You can imagine what it would be like on the stage," said club member and retired English teacher Bill McKenny. "And also it slows it down a little bit more. Sometimes when you would watch it on the stage, things would go by quick -- you'd say, 'I want to think about that a little bit more.'" 

By reading the play, McKenny said, you can re-read and savor and dwell on a scene or a line as much as you want. 

The first meeting of the Page to Stage Play Reading Club was August of last year. The club has had a rotating membership of about 22 people, consistently drawing 10 to 12 members to its meetings. Some are educators, some hold doctorates, and some, Bourek said, "are looking for something new and interesting to do." 

"It's another way for us to kind of reach out into the community," said Russell Wooley, Lamb's managing and artistic director. 

Club members can cycle in and out as they please; the club operates on a month-to-month basis, meeting to discuss last month's play and hand out copies of this month's play. 

"We kind of started out with people that were interested in theater itself, but we've really grown to engage people that enjoy reading, that enjoy discussions," Bourek said. "I will say it's probably, primarily a lot of older folk that are on the retired side, that are looking for something extra to do. But it's been really fun and engaging to bring our younger generation in, and we kind of have this generational gap in conversation. We have somebody in the group, he's in his 90s, and he served in World War II. And he'll talk about some of his experiences over life. And we're like, 'Wow, he's just so full of wisdom,' and he has so much knowledge to share. And he's there consistently, every month." 

The group, Bourek said, has read everything from "comedies to dramas, musicals and plays," classic pieces and contemporary alike.

The play for August was Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," an iconic dramatization of the AIDS epidemic. "It's a terrific one," Wooley said.

"That was probably one of the more challenging ones," McKenny said of the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning "Angels in America." 

In September the group began Anton Chekhov's 1904 "The Cherry Orchard," a tale of class status in Tsarist Russia and Chekhov's last before he died. 

"I try to find pieces that are going to push, and incite conversation," Bourek said. 

During its early phase, Bourek said he didn't know if the club was going anywhere: "I was not sure what we were going to be able to get out of people. I didn't know if this would take off or not, if we would have any interest in this." Still, he picked out a dozen plays for the club's first 12 months -- a carefully curated set of "notable works," he said; plays that have "merit."

Some are plays that the club members might never get the chance to see on the stage. Others are Lamb productions: Club members are invited to experience the play live and in the flesh, having experienced it on the page. 

McKenny said he usually tries to see the plays in some fashion, often videos on YouTube or borrowing a DVD from the library when the play isn't a Lamb production. "So I can read it, and then watch it performed, too," he said. "Kind of have both experiences."