Richer Resources:  Hi Helen. You call An American Breeze a readers theater play. What exactly is readers theater?

Helen Mondloch: As the name implies, readers theater is a form of drama that is meant to be read aloud in a group. The acting is in the reading. There are minimal stage directions and, hence, nothing that requires scenery or staging. It therefore lends itself to classroom performance. When presented on a stage, the audience is listening more than “viewing” the performance.

Richer Resources: What made you think of presenting American literature to high school students through readers theater?

Helen Mondloch: I wanted to create a lively, interactive learning activity—to translate the drama of the American story into a bit of classroom drama.

I also wanted to help students synthesize the disparate voices that comprise the American literary ages. Put another way, I wanted to shape the seeming chaos of our bloated textbook into a coherent story. To that end, I also wanted to help students grasp the powerful interplay between history and literature, illuminating the “thesis” of my course: the idea that history shapes literature, and literature often returns the favor in ways that are pretty profound. The play’s narrators paint a vivid picture of each historical era, providing context for the writers who blow in to share their stories. The play also presents close-up glimpses of the ways the writers, in turn, impacted history.

Finally, I was looking for an entertaining way to reinforce the pesky standards of learning (SOLs) to which teachers are held accountable at the end of the year on standard tests. I designed the study guides to assist with those.

Richer Resources:  How do students respond to the opportunity to take the parts of American authors?

Helen Mondloch: Students really delight in our lively classroom performances of the Breeze. They love stepping into the skin of the writers and experiencing the times in which they lived.

One year, my classes read the entire play as a project before our final exam, which provided a fun alternative to the usual grinding review. But I prefer to read it intermittingly throughout the year, following up our study of each literary era by a performing the corresponding act.

I have discovered that a readers theater experience woven into the school year at periodic intervals becomes a comforting refrain, reinforcing the bonds of our classroom community. Like the motifs we encounter in our great American novels, the Breeze’s anticipated return feels refreshing. It blows in at the end of each unit (pun intended) providing a way of engaging, reviewing, and even celebrating a particular era.

Richer Resources:  Tell me about how you got started writing in the first place. Did you write as a child, as a young student?

Helen Mondloch: My love for storytelling is probably rooted in the stories and verses my Greek grandmother recited to me when I was young. While she was unschooled, she was a passionate raconteur and loved to recite the folkloric tales and verses of her Cretan homeland.

The first stories I remember writing were the ones assigned by my third- or fourth-grade teacher for the purpose of getting us to use our spelling words in context. I loved engaging my imagination that way. Sometimes I would create a story series, with one week’s spelling story spilling into the next.

I began writing seriously when I was in my mid-20s—nonfiction articles on a wide variety of literary, historical, folkloric, and human interest topics, mostly for academic journals. At the heart of all my articles, there was always a story of some amazing person or group of people who impacted their community or society at large, or who helped change history.

Richer Resources:  In addition to writing nonfiction articles, have you written other works, such as fiction, poetry, or other plays?

Helen Mondloch: I have composed a few published poems over the years. I also spent a summer writing a lengthy and intricate outline for a novel. (Who knows if I will ever actually write it?) But I am mostly a creative nonfiction writer. I say “creative” because composing intriguing nonfiction demands imagination and poetic flair.

Richer Resources:  Did you find that your experience as a free-lance journalist informed your research for An American Breeze?

Helen Mondloch: Yes, writing in-depth pieces on topics related to American history, culture, and literature definitely played a significant role. I once wrote a series of articles about the American folklore canon, researching topics that appear in the pages of the Breeze. I wrote about Puritan folktales, the legend of Johnny Appleseed, and the Pocahontas rescue story, to name a few. I also wrote in-depth explorations of the life and times of major authors like Mark Twain and J.D. Salinger.

Richer Resources:  Would you recommend that teachers give their students opportunities to create monologues or skits incorporating writers who are not represented in An American Breeze?

Helen Mondloch: Yes! I would love to see teachers use the play as a jumping off point for additional research, study, and creative expression. Like any survey course, the play presents abundant glimpses of the major writers in each age but is certainly not comprehensive. Indeed, one of the greatest challenges in writing An American Breeze was deciding which writers should be writ large and which should garner a smaller spotlight. This challenge grew as I approached the age of Modernism, the age in which literature became more complex, and a variety of literary movements proliferated. I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night realizing I had neglected an important writer and would then find a way to work that writer into the text.

I would absolutely love to see an assignment that says—Which writer from the 1920s does Mondloch leave out? What would that writer say if he/she were to appear in the pages of An American Breeze?

Richer Resources: Have you and your students performed An American Breeze or parts of the play before different audiences, such as parents, other classes, or community groups?

Helen Mondloch: I recently did an author presentation at a book shop/café called Busboys and Poets in Arlington, Virginia. The presentation included student readers who helped me present excerpts. Our audience really seemed to enjoy the performance, especially the raucous lines of the chorus. We adapted a couple of these into short dance routines, which was a lot of fun. That was the only time I have performed the play for an audience. But I would love to do more of that in the future.

Richer Resources:  Could An American Breeze by used by organizations such as scout troops, youth groups, and the like?

Helen Mondloch: Yes, absolutely. After initially setting out to write the play for classroom use, I soon expanded my focus to include community theater and youth groups. I envisioned something akin to the radio-style dramas I have enjoyed at nearby George Mason University, or the readers theater I once attended at a local church, which took the audience on a playful romp through Virginia history.

The play would probably need to be tweaked if performed in its entirety before an audience. Portions of Acts 5 and Act 6 could be abridged without compromising the story’s continuity.