Halloween readers theater – ReadAloudPlays.com

Back a hundred years ago, ghoulishness was captured in short stories rather than comic books. Writers like Poe, Shelley, and Stevenson creeped out their audiences with dark tales of superstition, mystery, and insanity. The Gothic themes they created have been permeating literature, television, and cinema ever since.

So what if your students are mesmerized by Venom and Doctor Octopus? There are plenty of mangled monsters and the criminally insane in W.W. Jacob’s classic, The Monkey’s Paw, Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, and Hawthorne’s The Birthmark. They’ll also find that familiar ol’ headless horseman in Sleepy Hollow, and a hapless ghost in Twain’s A Ghost Story. No, your kids won’t find my version of Rappaccini’s Daughter Pennywise-creepy or Slenderman-scary, but its chemical concoctions and mad scientists make it very nearly as engaging. Most certainly, it’s a key to unlocking the original’s subtleties and complexities.

Your students know these themes. They’ve seen them on the Simpsons and Family Guy, in Goosebumps and Marvel Comics. But do they know from whence they come? Though the archaic language and complex structures of these classic tales present barriers for most middle grade readers, you can make the stories more accessible by pairing them with reader’s theater. And what better a time to do it than Halloween?

All these plays are available on my TeachersPayTeachers and Etsy storefronts. They’re critically-acclaimed. They’re inexpensive. They each come with a comprehension exercise. We’ve also put our three most popular spooky scripts in a splendid Halloween bundle, making them even less expensive! Suitable for reader’s theater, podcast radio drama, or full stage production, they’re perfect for fifth graders and up (plus strong 4th graders)—but get started early to have them well-rehearsed by Halloween.

Happy directing!

It’s time to give the competition some attention. For the last 15 years, ReadAloudPlays.com has been a “secondary market” for all the scripts I’ve published at Scholastic. Writing and staging of these plays has been and will continue to be a passion. The webpage and TpT store, on the other hand, have always been kind of a sideline gig. Now, as I head into retirement from daily classroom instruction, my intent is to push RAP to the forefront of the reader’s theater marketplace. I’m adding new collections (see image), adjusting how performance rights are purchased, and delving more thoroughly into social media and SEO marketing.

Still, wanting to be competitive, I’ve done a bit of scouting, and I’m convinced ReadAloudPlays.com remains the best value in reader’s theater anywhere—not only because we’re less expensive, but also, dare I say, because there’s something magical about our scripts.

I was a mainstay at Storyworks and Scope for 20 years. My editors there frequently told me what made my scripts special:

One, they said my scripts always hit the right reading level and age group. Though a play should push a reader’s vocabulary a bit, a play written for 3rd graders shouldn’t require an eighth grade reading level. Nor should a play for 6th graders sound like something from Daniel Tiger. Amateurs often miss these marks.

Two, because I test nearly all my scripts on students (and will continue to do so in retirement), my scripts appeal to their interests. Working directly with kids all these years has given me a knack for understanding what riles ‘em up. (Visit the DailyPlatypus.org to see for yourself.)

Third, there’s a bit of magic in every play. I’m able to add just the right touches to tug at their emotions or tickle their funny bone. The mayor’s telephone conversations in The Pied Piper, that Goldilocks is a home dec influencer, the strange gibberish spoken by the elves in Shoemaker, or that Otter wears goggles and a snorkel in Toad’s Wild Ride are the Sriracha and glitter that take the plays to the next level.

As for the competition, I encourage you to judge for yourself. ReadingAtoZ.com has a handful of plays, but the site requires an annual fee of $135. You could buy 30 of my plays for that price, each with the license to print a full class set.

ScriptsforSchools.com sells plays for $14.95 and up, teacher packets are $45, and collections run $100.

Readerstheater.com— Has a ton of short plays—some really short. They’re professionally bound, but most are $7 per student, meaning a single play for 7 actors runs $49. No duplication license is included.

Weebly is a great resource for RT—and much of it is free—but there’s trouble afoot. Many of the plays there are copyright violations. For example, unless the author of Miss Nelson is Missing granted copyright (which is unlikely) the play should not exist, nor can it be legally performed for an audience. Another example is when a teacher inadvertently posts a copyright-protected script for their students. When one of our plays shows up on Weebly, our only recourse is to contact the school and file a copyright complaint. It’s awkward for all of us. (We REALLY appreciate teachers who respect copyright.)

PioneerDrama.com is one of the big boys of RT, but they charge big boy prices. Scripts run $10 per student and performance rights are $75 per performance.

And of course there are a variety of other sites with free and paid play scripts, but in our opinion, they usually lack the “magic” of a script from ReadAloudPlays.com.

Finally, there’s AI. That’s right. I know teachers are going to Gemini or ChatGPT and asking them to create a play from a given story. To see what damage AI will cause, I too gave it a try. What I got back was a very short and very bland script with way too much narration (a sure sign of amateurism). No magic there. Asking artificial intelligence to create a script is like asking the microwave to cook all five courses of your Thanksgiving dinner. Yuck. No salt. No pepper. Definitely no Sriracha.

So, as you embark on another school year, take advantage of all the magical, perfectly-seasoned, original, and inexpensive plays from ReadAloudPlays.com. You’ll find all of them on our Tpt storefront. And if you like our plays, please share our link, leave us 5 star reviews, follow us on TpT, and look for us on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook.

Thanks, and happy directing!