Most Dangerous Women: Bringing History to Life Through Readers' Theater

by Jan Maher, Harriet Hyman Alonso (Foreword)

A unique gift for teachers . . . a play in which an extraordinary assemblage of women speak about war and peace. They speak in clear and compelling language, often with song and poetry, and what they tell their audience both educates and inspires. If Most Dangerous Women were performed in schools across the country, we might well see a new generation of young people dedicated to ending the scourge of war.
- Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States If we want a more peaceful world, we have to teach people that such a world is possible and that it is both their right and their responsibility to take action to make it happen. Most Dangerous Women contributes to those efforts and should be mandatory reading in our schools.
- Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate While history is full of engaging, courageous figures who do the unexpected and alter the course of events, adolescents sometimes have trouble making a connection with historical content. That can change when you use readers' theater and let students breathe life into the people, stories, and events of history. Most Dangerous Women gives you the tools to make it happen and offers an exciting way to teach about women in the peace movement. Jan Maher introduces you to readers' theater, an incredibly powerful teaching and learning tool that brings history to life. Most Dangerous Women is the title of both the book and a play within the book that will be a source for integrating readers' theater into your teaching. Engage students in historical content by taking on the roles of women and men who took a stand during the peace movement - whether for it or against. As teens get into their parts, they will grapple with key literacy and history concepts such as point of view and context, explore their own beliefs, and take on responsibility for their learning. Best of all, you don't need any prior dramatic training to conduct readers' theater in your classroom because the book includes the complete script for Most Dangerous Women and guidelines for the many ways to perform it-reading aloud, staging it in class, or as a full-scale production. Most Dangerous Women is ideal for creating a classroom where students take on responsibility for learning as well as an exciting new way to enrich and expand your students' understanding of history.

176 pages, Paperback

First published March 7, 2006

About the author

Jan C. Maher (b. 1946) is an American writer and educational consultant. She has written numerous plays and books including Most Dangerous Women (2006, 2015, 2017) and two novels, Heaven, Indiana (2000) and Earth As It Is (2017). She is a featured contributor in the fiction anthology A Contract of Words, and has several short stories and poems in online and print journals including Meat for Tea: The Valley Review and Straw Dog Poetry Anthology: Compass Roads: A dispatch from Paradise/Poems about the Pioneer Valley .

Her first collection of short stories, The Persistence of Memory and Other Stories, will be released on Feb. 19, 2020.

She attended Shimer College, and earned degrees from The New School, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, and The Union Institute and University. She is co-founder and director of Local Access, a non-profit organization whose mission is to create educational opportunities in and through the arts, and is a senior scholar at the Institute for Ethics in Public Life, State University of New York at Plattsburgh.

She lives in Greenfield, MA.

Reviews

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange that Goodreads invites me to rate and review my own book! But seriously, Most Dangerous Women, now in a 3rd edition that will be available by the end of June, 2017, is a project I'm proud of. Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, says this of the play (which is the centerpiece of the book): "An extraordinary assemblage of women speak about war and peace. They speak in clear and compelling language, often with song and poetry, and what they tell their audience both educates and inspires."

The book is designed to facilitate readers' theater, that is, it is printed in 8.5 x 11 format with the script in 14 point font for extra readability. Additional chapters focus on how to work with the play in classrooms and community theater settings and how to find out more about the amazing women featured in the play.