The events detailed in the Mueller Report are dramatic enough to be the content of a stage play, and on Thursday, July 11, the Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater is coming close to making that a reality with an 11-hour-long marathon read of the report’s second volume.
Hosted in association with activist and actress Jjana Valentiner, the public, nonpartisan event will feature up to 200 participants, according to a press release from the Arena Theater.
“As a theater focused on American plays and American stories, the Mueller Report is a far-reaching and intricate American story about D.C. and the people in it,” according to a statement by Artistic Director Molly Smith. “Many people have only heard the report in bits and pieces - this gives them the opportunity to read aloud without comment, listen and make up their own minds. This reading is, in many ways, a democratic act.”
The event was prompted by a 24-hour reading hosted in New York earlier this month. Up to 50,000 people streamed it, and it was attended in-person by more than 700 people.
“The Mueller Report can be quite dense and heavy at times, but there is a real clarity when it is read aloud with many different voices,” said Valentiner in a written statement.
Scheduled volunteer readers include a range of activists, artists and community leaders, such as D.C. Councilman Charles Allen, artistic director of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company Maria Manuela Goyanes and D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton.
The reading will begin at 12 p.m. and end at 11 p.m. in the theater's Molly Smith Study. Audience members can enter and leave at any time during the reading, and the event is free and open to the public, though RSVPS are encouraged here. The event will also be livestreamed.
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Those interested in participating as a volunteer reader can email reader@arenastage.org for more information, or to sign up for a shift.
