“We’re getting the actors involved in creating live foley sound effects, the character of Orson Welles silently berating actors as they get last minute script changes, and we even are experimenting with a theremin,” he cheers. “It is such a unique experience to direct a play meant to be listened to and not seen,” Cole beams. Koch, co-writer of Casablanca, and directed and narrated by Orson Welles, this original script detailing the frightening tale of an extraterrestrial takeover is now being brought to life onstage to thrill and chill audiences.ĭirector Benjamin Cole is proud to present this terrifying takeover of humanity as we watch the “behind-the-scenes” look at the radio actors caught in action as they perform the live radio drama. Wells, had many terrified listeners convinced that an actual alien invasion of Earth was taking place. Foreigners attack level the East Coast xenophobia, panic ensue.The Theatre School North Coast Rep presents the exciting radio drama brought to the stage, The War of the Worlds: The 1938 Radio Script, as its next student production! Broadcast from New York’s Mercury Theatre in 1938, this infamous radio play, based on the novel by H.More from this episode: Off-Ramp® FOR OctoA rare rebroadcast of Orson Welles 1938 "War of the Worlds" - Off-Ramp for October 27, 2012 War of the Worlds…and War of the Welles.But remember, it's Halloween, and to paraphrase Welles, this is just Off-Ramp's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying, "Boo!" We’re delighted to get his name back on the air where it belongs.Ībove all, "The War of the Worlds" is a moving, chilling drama, and we hope you enjoy it. What?! Orson Welles didn’t write the script from HG Wells' novel?! Nope, it was Koch, who also won an Oscar for his work on the screenplay for "Casablanca." But he was blacklisted in the McCarthy Era, and his career never really recovered. Our broadcast comes through a special arrangement with Anne Koch, the widow of Howard Koch, the playwright. (KPCC’s Crawford Family Forum is also hosting a Halloween evening performance of the broadcast by the Long Beach Shakespeare Company.) We’re turning our broadcast over to the Mercury Theatre on the Air and will air the original 1938 production. So, this weekend on Off-Ramp (Saturday at noon and Sunday at 7pm), and again on Halloween at 8pm, we’re giving you the chance. Hearing their tense dialogue and anguished voices, it’s not hard to recall eyewitnesses of the wars in Libya, Syria, Bosnia, Chechnya, Vietnam.Īnd while I bet all of you have heard of this broadcast, and heard parts of it, I bet most of you have never heard "The War of the Worlds" all the way through. Hearing Welles and his fellow actors describe leveled buildings and cities, images of Hiroshima or 9/11 come to mind pretty easily. And it surely touched a nerve in the rest of the listeners. Surely most of the audience knew it was a drama – it was clearly labeled so at several points in the one-hour show – but nevertheless there was some level of understandable panic in parts of the country. Then comes October 30, and Orson Welles' broadcast of "The War of the Worlds," about an alien invasion that devastates the US before it’s finally put down. Hitler, Franco, Stalin, and Mussolini had Europe nervous and seething and the Depression gave Americans another level of anxiety. The world was poised on a knife-edge of history, about to plunge into World War 2. However, the Old Time Radio Catalogue is a wonderful resource for CD's filled with all sorts of old radio shows, including War of the Worlds and at Internet Archive, you can find Dragnet, Gunsmoke, Philip Marlowe, as well as all of Orson Welles' classic broadcasts. UPDATE: Per our agreement with the Koch family, we only kept the audio for this episode of Off-Ramp online for a week.
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