Unleash the power of a book.
Your favorite book comes to life before your eyes: ONE person telling the story, performing ALL of the characters, and transforming an important work of contemporary American literature into a live theatrical experience shared in community.
Literature to Life (LTL) is a performance-based literacy program that presents professionally staged verbatim adaptations of American literary classics. LTL’s mission is to perform great books that inspire young people to read and become authors of their own lives.
The following titles are available for the upcoming season:
Black Boy
Based on the novel Black Boy by Richard Wright, Copyright ©1945
The Story
Black Boy is a powerful account of one young man’s journey from innocence to experience as a black youth living in the Jim Crow South. It is both the unashamed confession of a proud non-conformist and a profound indictment—a poignant and disturbing record of social injustice and human suffering.
In Performance
Having premiered at the Kennedy Center, this Literature to Life original was one of the first titles on our roster to tour to communities nationally. A tour de force, the actor plays upwards of fifteen characters from Richard Wright’s past.
Appropriate for: elementary / middle / high school, college, and community audiences. Available for pre-recorded, remote, or LIVE! performances
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Based on the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz ©2008
This thrilling adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel chronicles the life of Oscar, an overweight science-fiction enthusiast who dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien. Encapsulating magical realism and Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao presents audiences with an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere, and risk it all in the name of love.
The Story
Oscar de Leon is an overweight Dominican boy growing up in Paterson, N.J. who obsesses over science fiction, fantasy novels, falling in love, and the curse that has plagued his family for generations. Despite the endless taunting from friends, family, and foes, Oscar remains true to himself, as the family curse declares its power and the violence of Oscar’s family history collides with his present.
In Performance
This Literature to Life presentation features the delicately brutal words of Junot Díaz, detailing the life-long alienation of the love-obsessed Oscar as narrated by his unlikely friend, Yunior. Through this 60 minute exploration of brotherhood, fantasy stories, and what it means to be a “Dominican man,” we come to understand the culture of fear and violence that resulted from Trujillo’s 30+ years dictatorship of the Dominican Republic, and the importance of facing fear with love.
Appropriate for: high school, college, and community audiences. Available for pre-recorded, remote, or LIVE! performances
The Latehomecomer
A HMONG FAMILY MEMOIR by KAO KALIA YANG
In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand, finally emigrating to America; but lacking a written language of their own. Driven to tell her family’s story after her grandmother’s death – the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others – The Latehomecomer is Kao Kalia Yang’s tribute to her remarkable grandmother whose spirit held them all together. It is also an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard.
The Story
Told with the immediacy of the author as a young girl, born in the Ban Vinai Refugee camp in Thailand, Kao Kalia arrives in the United States when she is six. The story follows her journey from a quiet, reticent student struggling to speak English while facing racial discrimination, to a self-empowered young woman claiming her voice to tell the untold story of her people.
In Performance
Accomplished Hmong actress and traditional Flower Singer, Gaosong Heu, brings this powerful, personal story to life, with her musical talent and knowledge of Hmong culture. The performance tells a universal story of immigration, through the specific lens of this ancient culture inextricably bound to the history of the war in Vietnam.
Appropriate for: elementary / middle / high school, college, and community audiences. Available for pre-recorded, remote, or LIVE! performances
County of Kings
Adapted from the extraordinary life of poet, playwright and speaker Lemon Andersen, this riveting on-stage memoir will resonate with young audiences long after they leave the theatre. Touching on young love, the birth of hip hop, slinging crack, ballet, stealing car parts, prison, and poetry, County of Kings takes audiences on an astonishing journey of self-discovery.
The Story
County of Kings is a tough, yet poignant biographical account of a good kid growing up in an unforgiving environment. Lemon, whose parents met at a methadone clinic and died from AIDS, served two prison sentences before he was 21 and won a Tony Award before he turned 30. Weaving hard-edged drama with urban poetry, County of Kings is a coming-of-age story told with profound honesty, compassion and humor.
In Performance
Baby Power aka MAV (Michael Angel Viera) brings Lemon’s spoken word poetry and life story to the stage with style and grace. MAV then encourages students to write poems and “MCs” the sharing of their own verses in response
Appropriate for: high school, college, and community audiences. Available for remote or LIVE! performances
Fahrenheit 451
By Ray Bradbury
Literature to Life brings Ray Bradbury’s terrifyingly recognizable vision of the future to the stage for audiences of all ages. Guy Montag is a fireman in a not-so distant future. Except instead of putting out fires, he starts them in order to burn books. Bradbury’s vision of a world, awash in information, but lacking critical thought, offers audiences a sobering look at our world, while offering hope for a better future.
The Story
This classic American novel presents a frightening vision of the future: where firemen don’t put out fires – they start them in order to burn books. One night while returning from work, Fireman Guy Montag meets his new neighbor: a teenage girl whose free-thinking ideals and liberating spirit cause him to question his life and his own perceived happiness.
In Performance
This Literature to Life award winner was adapted for the stage and helped to launch the national literacy effort, Project 451. The show features sixty minutes of performance spanning the full breadth of this beloved American science fiction novel. In performance, the actor tells the story from the perspective of the protagonist, Montag, and seamlessly transitions between the five other primary characters.
Appropriate for: elementary / middle / high school and college audiences. Available for LIVE! performances
The Giver
Based on the novel The Giver by Lois Lowry ©1993
Produced by special arrangement with THE DRAMATIC PUBLISHING COMPANY of Woodstock, Illinois
This Newbery-Award winning, best-selling book for young readers has become the gold standard for the genre. Told with deceptive simplicity, this is the provocative story of a boy who experiences something incredible and undertakes something impossible. In the telling, audiences question every value that they have taken for granted and reexamine their most deeply held beliefs.
The Story
At the age of twelve, Jonas, a young boy from a seemingly utopian, futuristic world, is singled out to receive special training from The Giver, who alone holds the memories of the true joys and pain of life. In the process, Jonas is forced to question everything in his ideal world: a world without conflict, poverty, unemployment, divorce, injustice, or inequality.
In Performance
This Literature to Life Award winner marked the first young adult novel on the Literature to Life roster. Adapted by Elise Thoron, this piece features sixty minutes of solo-performance focusing on the relationship between the young Jonas and his mentor, The Giver. As Jonas trains to become the Receiver of Memories, the buried truth about the world that he was born into becomes hauntingly clear to both Jonas and the audience.
Appropriate for: elementary / middle / high school, college, and community audiences. Available for LIVE! performances
The Great Gatsby
By F. Scott Fitzgerald
Directed and Adapted by Kelvin Grullon
The Story
Literature to Life takes on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic work as their newest title in their Signature Performance series. Set in the Jazz Age of the roaring 20s, this story about dreams, love, and American idealism follows Nick Carraway and his interactions with mysterious millionaire neighbor Jay Gatsby and his former lover, Daisy Buchanan.
Appropriate for: middle / high school, college, and community audiences
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
Based on the novel I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez
Adapted and Directed by Ana Maria Jomolca & Performed by Elizabeth Raquel Ramirez
The Story
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER comes to life as Literature to Life adapts Erika L. Sánchez’s YA novel as their newest title in their Signature Performance series. This title will be co-produced in partnership with Freedom Reads, the only organization in the nation transforming the experience of incarceration by opening libraries in prison housing facilities. Freedom Reads was founded by Reginald Dwayne Betts in 2020. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter takes place in modern day Chicago. The novel focuses on the idea of finding one’s own identity, and breaking free from societal, cultural, and familial expectations.
Appropriate for: middle / high school, college, and community audiences
If Beale Street Could Talk
Based on the novel If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin, Copyright ©1974
A story that remains disturbingly poignant sixty years after it was first published, James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk is about abiding love in the face of injustice. Told from the perspective of its young heroine, this is the story of one family’s fight for justice in a society where institutional discrimination has the power to destroy lives, a theme that resonates today with audiences from all walks of life.
The Story
Young lovers Tish and Fonny discover they are having a baby after Fonny is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. Racing against time and injustice, their families come together to bring Fonny home before the baby comes.
In Performance
This dynamic solo performance is told through Tish’s point of view, as well as Fonny’s in prison. The tone of the story is both sad, and sweet and determined. The audience understands in depth the central character’s dilemma, as she continues to visit the father of her child behind bars and her devotion to Fonny increases. The performance shows us the strength of the Rivers family; how they come together to defend Fonny and get him out of prison to be reunited with Tish and their child. Throughout the performance we watch how the power of a family’s love can fight injustice and the racial bias of the judicial system.