For literature lovers, reading a book has always been theater for the mind. Now British theater artists Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells are going one step further in an artistic collaboration termed autoteatro. Their piece, The Quiet Volume, fashions an audience-performed drama of the inner mind with a guided meditation on reading that is simultaneously public and private. It runs through September 22 as part of the 17th annual Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

In an interview on the FringeArts blog, Hampton explains that the show's title was chosen because "the piece would be an attempt to listen to what's going on in our heads when we read…it's something very hard to grasp, something you have to tune into."

The Quiet Volume has taken up residence all over the Free Library's main branch, and Flying Kite arrived on opening day to sample Philadelphia's autoteatro frontier. 

When ticket-buyers check in on the library's second floor, they're paired with one other ticket holder. The two don a set of iPod headphones, and a staffer leads them to a table in one of the library's many galleries. In front of two adjacent chairs sits a thin red spiral-bound notebook, a stack of three novels and a photography book. 

Attendees are audience and actor all in one as a series of whispering voices guide their gaze and their hands. There's a spontaneous, almost eerie symmetry between your real-life surroundings and the observations of the voice in your ear -- the sights and sounds of the library (gentle coughs, footsteps, turning pages, clicking keyboards) and the way your thoughts unfold in response.

Quiet voices tell you what books to open, which pages to read, and slowly bring you and your partner into a subtle, silent physical alliance through the shared experience of your books. 

"Are you an imposter?" the voice says, asking you to take in the library's other patrons, reading and researching without realizing that they're part of your live participatory theater landscape. The voice wonders if watching other people while they're buried in a book is like watching them while they sleep; in both cases, "there's a presence and an absence." 

For one absorbing hour, the whispers in the headsets and the words on the page meld and separate, build and recede. Through the earphones' gentle, unpredictable instructions, participants mine the mental, visual, emotional and tactile experiences of reading. Is it a solitary act or a partnership? Is your partner the author of the words, the ink on the page, or a voice in your head that you can't quite define? 

The Quiet Volume runs at the Free Library through September 22. The experience begins every fifteen minutes, and participants should arrive fifteen minutes before show time. Tickets are $15. For more information, visit the FringeArts website.

ALAINA MABASO, a Philadelphia-based freelance journalist, has landed squarely in what people tell her is the worst possible career of the twenty-first century. So she makes Pennsylvania her classroom, covering everything from business to theater to toad migrations. After her editors go to bed, she blogs at http://alainamabaso.wordpress.com/. Find her on Twitter @AlainaMabaso.