Monday, April 30, 2018

Who are the Pallahaxi Players? What is Readers Theatre?






Who are the Pallahaxi Players? What is Readers Theatre?

Reader's theatre or Reader's theater is a style of theater in which the actors do not memorize their lines. Actors use only vocal expression to help the audience understand the story … This style of performance of literature was initially lauded because it emphasized hearing a written text as a new way to understand literature.” Wikipedia

The Pallahaxi Players is a group of fans and authors who like to perform (scripts in hand) short plays for the audiences of VCon—Vancouver’s premier science fiction, fantasy, and gaming convention. We are following in the tradition of Lonely Cry Theatre, founded by Michael G. Coney, who with fellow writers and hangers on entertained VCon audiences for years. Our name is an homage to the world found in his novels Hello, Summer, Goodbye (alternately published as Rax and Pallahaxi Tide) and I Remember Pallahaxi.

Recipient of the British Science Fiction Association Award, one Nebula, and five Aurora Awards, Michael G. Coney was a well loved man and an influential writer in the 1970s British Invasion, writing a variety of works that often lulled the reader into thinking she was reading fantasy only to discover it was finely wrought science fiction. Humour, character, place, and plot all played a large part in Mike’s works. He is greatly missed by those who knew him.

This year at VCon, as part of our celebration of the British Invasion, the Pallahaxi Players will be performing Mike’s first Lonely Cry offering, “Sex and Perversion in Gnomedom.”



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Mike Coney, External References:

“I think that [writing] has taught me always to be completely honest with the reader and never allow myself to take the easy way out for the sake of glib plot device.”


Casey June Wolf’s first contact with Mike Coney’s books (“though I’d known Mike and his Lonely Cry Readers Theatre for some years”): “Pallahaxi Mike,” Den Page of Casey June Wolf, Friday, September 16, 2005.




Excerpt from Pallahaxi Tide by Michael G. Coney, read by Casey June Wolf. FintanSparky, 22 Oct 2011.
Michael G. Coney Wikipedia page.
Summary Bibliography: Michael G. Coney, The Internet Speculative Fiction Database.




Image: "Alien Amor" by Laura_Molina (Laura Molina/National Museum of Mexican Art) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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