Philosophy in Practice One of the techniques used most often by theatre high school teachers is role-playing. The reasons that this technique is often used are numerous. When students read a text silently some of the nuance contained in the meaning can be lost. This is particularly true when dealing with a play, or anything containing multiple characters. Reading the piece aloud can help them to understand the connotation as well as the denotation. In the theatre, how a passage is spoken will determine the feeling that it carries with it. Lines of dialogue can suddenly become funny or sad once given inflection.