Describes how a teacher of a college introductory-literature course used role-playing, a talk-show format, and reader-audience participation to help students make collaborative meaning for, and to promote students’ active engagement with a Flannery O’Connor short story.

Uses role-playing, dramatic monologues, and "tableaux vivant" to interpret Robert Browning’s poem "My Last Duchess" in an introductory literature class at Westchester Community College. Notes that performative strategies illustrate connections in the poem that often remain unnoticed on a first reading.