Mostly a comedy, but with a very serious message, How Reading Came Back to Nowhere is an important play for Children's Theatre. The long one-act, popular for years, added music because of popular demand; therefore, it can be presented as a musical or a non-musical.

Learning to read is not a pleasant task for some young people. But grown-ups who can't read eventually realize what a handicap they are burdened with. The good citizens of Nowhere aren't illiterate because learning to read was too much trouble. The inhabitants of the isolated little village are ruled by a cunningly ruthless dictator who subjugates his people by keeping them illiterate which means, of course, that they are also very poor. Maestro Mean likes to keep it that way. He rides around in his Mean Mobile screaming orders and threatening to do horrible things to anybody caught with a book. He knows that he will have no trouble keeping them under his thumb as long as they are illiterate. Since they aren't allowed to learn to read and write, it follows that that's what the Nowhereians want more than anything else in the world. When a literate young woman named Parsley strays undetected into the village, the inhabitants implore her to teach them, even though they know they are risking her life and theirs.

The play has suspense, humor, and fast action... and may convince your audiences that literacy is a priceless possession. For children or adults, or both. The Production Notes give extensive suggestions from set and costumes to vigorous physical action and the Mean Mobile, one of the many comic features of the play.

See also: Plays About Social Issues, Musical/Non-Musicals