Back in my college days, one of the things I used to enjoy was sitting around in the dorm room of a friend of mine who was a Drama major and several other people, some Drama majors, some not, and read plays. Lots of Shakespeare. No staging or props or anything, other than our copies of "The Complete Works of Shakespeare," often sharing copies and reading over each other's shoulders.

But this was for our own enjoyment, enlightenment, edification, and education. The idea of holding our little recreational readings in a place open to the public, or, God forbid! charging people to listen to us as we butchered the Bard never even occurred to us.

We have an upstairs neighbor who is an actor. He has done a bit of national television, and he has acted in the Ashland, Oregon Shakespeare festivals a number of times. He is currently very active in "little theater" here in Seattle.

He and a number of other actors have been asked to do regular "performances" in one of the big lounges at Horizon House, a big, somewhat posh retirement home in downtown Seattle. They sit up in front of the audience and read various plays, including lots of Shakespeare. And the audiences enjoy it greatly.

No staging, no costumes, no bits of business. It's very much like listening to a Shakespeare play on the radio.

But it should be noted that these are all professional actors doing this, and although they have books and scripts before them, most of the time they don't even look at them. They already know the roles.

Horizon House pays them, which, of course, comes out of what the residents pay to live there, but the residents don't have to pay directly. It's one of the services that Horizon House offers to its residents.

Somehow I don't think these people would really be interested in listening to, and certainly not in having their money spent to listen to a bunch of people sit around and "hymn sing" folk songs out of Rise Up Singing.

If people want to get together and do it (like reading plays in a dorm room) among themselves for their own enjoyment, fine and dandy. More power to them!

But expecting to charge people money to listen to something like this is a bit much.

Don Firth