The author needed a way to engage her students in the reading process and found one extremely successful strategy: using Readers' Theater. Readers' Theater "dramatizes" literature through a classroom performance and provides visual and oral stimulus to students who are not used to using imagination to appreciate literary texts. It involves a presentation by two or more participants who read the story as a script. Readers' Theater "productions" afford students the opportunity to select, rehearse, and present short dramas to classmates or others without the stress of memorizing lines or the bother and expense of elaborate costumes or props. It gives students an authentic reason to engage in repeated reading of texts as they prepare for their performance. Readers' Theater helps struggling readers gain confidence because they are not required to read the whole script by themselves, since parts are divided among the group. And students like it because they get to interact with their peers. For success with Readers' Theater, teachers should use texts for performance that are not above the readers' instructional levels. They should have straightforward plots that present characters working through dilemmas.