Open-Door Playhouse to Partner With UK-Based Springline Radio Players to Present THE CANTERVILLE GHOST

Hands Across the Pond Theatre, a collaboration between the LA-based Open-Door Playhouse and the UK-based Our Kid and Me Productions, will present an audio play production of The Canterville Ghost, adapted for the theatre by Gareth Thomas from the short story by Oscar Wilde. Adapted for audio by John and David Hunter and directed by Bernadette Armstrong. The production will premiere on the Open-Door Playhouse Podcast and the Springline Radio Players Podcast on Wednesday, March 24. The episode will be free to download, but donations to the podcast are greatly appreciated. Please visit www.opendoorplayhouse.org/donate. The performance will run approximately 45 minutes, with no intermission.

The Canterville Ghost is a humorous short story by Oscar Wilde about an American family who move to a castle haunted by the ghost of a dead English nobleman. This audio presentation of the classic ghost story will bring together theatre artists and performers from Oxfordshire, UK and Glendale, CA.

The cast will include Jennie Cosgrave, John Hunter, and Gareth Thomas from the United Kingdom with Amir Abdullah, Elaine Mello-Clarke, Brandon Lamberty, Franco Machado, McKenna Koledo, and Matthew Scott Montgomery from the United States. Sound Design is by Hall Cantrell. The Open-Door Podcast is recorded at ES Audio Studios in Glendale, CA.

Small theaters all over the country have been shuttered due to COVID-19, leaving playwrights with nowhere to produce their plays. The Open-Door Playhouse is a podcast that supports new and emerging writers by producing plays in the style of the live Radio Plays popular in the 1940s & 50s. Open-Door Playhouse is hosted by playwright and producer Bernadette Armstrong who conceived of the podcast after her most recent project, Custody, was scheduled to open in North Hollywood on September 8, 2020 at the Secret Rose Theater, but it was canceled due to the pandemic. Since September the podcast has presented over 25 new plays by emerging playwrights from New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and PEN America's Prison Writing Program

Bernadette Armstrong (Director) moved to Los Angeles to work in film in the late 1990's and after her first two films went to festivals, she took a short hiatus from writing until she fell in love with small theater. Since 2008 she has had several successful theater projects produced in North Hollywood. Her play The Reading Group was named Pick of the Week by LA Weekly Magazine and in 2017 her play Simple Lives was nominated for Outstanding Writing of an Original Play or Musical by the Valley Theater Awards (the only woman nominated). Bernadette's most recent project, Custody, was scheduled to open in North Hollywood on September 8, 2020 at the Secret Rose Theater, but it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.