When the performers of the Ageless Repertory Theatre look out from the stage, audience members often have their eyes closed.

Most are concentrating on the actors’ voices, letting themselves be swept up in the words, imagining the scene created by the dialog and traveling in their minds to distant lands.

“The joke is: Are they really asleep or listening intently?” artistic director Len Overholser said.

Founded in 2000, Ageless Repertory Theatre — also known as ART — is a Reno-based company that performs short plays in reader’s theater style. The actors sit on stage with their scripts and perform in full voice but with no backdrops and minimal costuming or movement.

ART consists largely of local retirees — both the in the performers and the audience — and while it usually has some kind of production going on, Artown will have the group particularly busy this month.

Overholser will be directing three of the four plays to be performed, with the fourth being led by Sparks resident Mary English. The month’s performances will start with “The Octette Bridge Club,” followed by “Tuesdays With Morrie,” “Everybody Loves Opal” and finally “Social Security.”

“I love the concept of creating a whole character with your voice,” said English, who is directing “Octette,” which played on Tuesday and will be performed again Friday.

ART sticks to a strict rehearsal and performance regimen: three rehearsals followed by two performances. Since no one is memorizing lines or complex stage blocking, extensive rehearsals aren’t necessary. In the case of “Octette,” the scene is simple: a group of eight Irish sisters meet regularly through the years to play cards and, in the process, the story of their lives unfolds. No fancy sets or outfits are necessary to supplement the drama created by the dialog and its delivery.

Watching the eight local actresses rehearse for the play last week, it was easy to see (or, rather, not see) how the scene is created by the words they speak and was unaffected by the lack of costumes and background.

The women sat in a row on the stage, with some of the performers occasionally standing up. The sisters run the gamut of personalities, as do their problems and the ways they cope with them. By the end of the play, the characters are in their 40s, and the fact that the actresses are some 20 years older makes their readings more believable in a “been there, experienced that” kind of way, even though it is a work of fiction.

A student of broadcasting 50 years ago at the University of Michigan, English got into acting after seeing ART at the Sparks Library. She got involved in the group and, by her own admission, said she usually gets the “mean old lady” parts. In “Octette Bridge Club,” she plays a sister who is stern and ornery but who ultimately reveals her own weaknesses and sensitivity — only to quickly cover it back up under her crusty shell.

English said audience members tell her that through the dialog they can envision what the characters are doing. Overholser compares it to radio dramas that ruled the entertainment world before television.

“If you listen to us and close your eyes you can see whatever scene you put up,” English said.

Alicia Marsella, a 70-year-old Reno resident with more than 30 years of local theater experience in the San Francisco area, said she enjoys playing characters of all ages, from children to people her own age. In a play called “The Dining Room,” she portrayed her character from childhood to being a grandmother, though she did say that as she has gotten older there do seem to be fewer parts for her to play.

“If I’m not doing it I get kind of crabby,” Marsella said of acting. “I moved to Reno five years ago and if I didn’t have something like this I’d get kind of antsy.”

Former school teacher Sharon Maddux of Reno, who also is performing in “Octette,” acted in one high school play and was so terrified she thought she’d never go on stage again. But here she is 40 years later, enjoying acting so much that she got her husband, Cleb, an advanced statistics professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, involved. The couple performed together in “Same Time Next Year” as a two married people having an affair with each other, which elicited a lot of laughs particularly from audience members who knew they were married in real life.

“It’s nice to find out something about yourself at 62,” Maddux said of her new found love of performing.

All performances of the Ageless Repertory Theatre are free, although donations are welcome. For a list of upcoming performances and locations, visit http://webpages.charter.net/agelessrep/upcoming.html.