Please help - creative problem - drama character with a prop?

[drawingablankb]

I am trying to come up with ideas for a play/drama group that would allow one character to read their lines as they are unable to learn them.

It needs to be a character who can plausibly hold a book or a clipboard or something that they can have with them the whole time to read off. It needs to be blended into the drama or play.

The obvious idea is a narrator to the side with a large book doing a 'once upon time" bit but I'm looking for something that would be more central to the action.

The only things I have been able to come up with are a teacher (Joyce Grenfell register style), a vicar at the lecturn or someone in a board meeting at the head of the table with papers. Neither of these are very drama friendly or particularly inspiring characters. They are also quite positionally fixed (vicar at the lectern).

Anyone got any other thoughts or suggestions? Even better do you know of any existing plays or playlets with something like this in it?

It's 2026, someone could have a phone or a tablet they are reading something off. Easier to have a character who's glued to their phone than invent a need for a vicar.

Character could be reading instructions for building something, fixing a car, putting up a tent. Assembling a bike ? A recipe book?

Putting the Christmas tree together, and following deceased parents instructions for the precise layout of all the decorations...

What is the setting for the play? If in a shop, for example, they could be stocktaking - or carrying any item of stock that would conceal a copy of the script. A librarian could be carrying a book or books. A tour guide could be carrying a copy of the itinerary/list of names. A journalist or writer would have a notebook. Or an actor who is reading a new script.

Or just carry their phone and look at it when they need to? Have something about them checking the football scores or waiting for a message.

If the character is a teenager, they could be immersed in their phone the whole time.. and the lines would just be grunts anyway.

I’m picturing a ghost sitting in an armchair reading a newspaper throughout the whole performance. That probably wouldn’t fit in with your play at all, but I think it’s a play I’d like to see

Of course, any character could be carrying a magazine or catalogue or whatever. Give them a Radio Times or make them a keen gardener and give them a gardening magazine.

Or a singer/musician with some sheet music.

I visualise a SPAD/ political assistant following their politician around with their eyes glued to their tablet/phone.
But I'm afraid I do think that if they are reading their lines the whole.time it will be quite obvious, whatever you do. And also difficult to hear if they have their head down all the time.
Could it be someone with few if any actual lines but who still gets to do a lot? The character of the brother who doesn't speak in Arcadia for example, although I may be misremembering.

Someone organising something, like a fair, or a bunch of tourists.

Instead of a narrator, could you factor in a newsreader at a desk or maybe a reporter?

We did this once - it was a story about a particular moment in time and the "cutaways" to the relevant news stories helped to root the action in the correct time.

a tablet is a good idea. better than phone as can have more text on it.
it's more about why would they need to be looking and reading from it. a character glued to it could just be saying anything unrelated.

What about a newspaper? It works well because from a distance it just looks like part of the news if visible to the audience

Another option, if it would fit with your play, is a policeman or detective with a notebook.

Or you could have a character with the characteristic (could be humorous) of being obsessed with their mobile phone, and have the lines on there.

Could they be a character that likes to check all the facts and is constantly saying “Actually that was in 1982” or similar? Some opportunity for comedy…
Or could they be waiting for a delivery that could arrive near the end, so you introduce early on that they are constantly checkingfor a message?

Someone who has been taken by the AI bug and is constantly checking facts/ advice with ‘Claude’ ??

A map? An A to Z / guidebook? A different language - translating?

A radical idea, but could they afford/borrow smart glasses which could be programmed to prompt their lines?

My dd was once in School of Rock and played a character called Summer who had a clipboard and a fluffy pencil all the time. She was the teachers pet sort of character.

H&S officer with clipboard