Ray Bradbury's PILLAR OF FIRE Comes to Hollywood Fringe Tonight

Three years after his passing, Ray Bradbury's prose takes center stage in an LA theater reading opening on the anniversary of the author's death.

Ray Bradbury's Pillar Of Fire, a solo rendition of Bradbury's novella of the same name by actor Bill Oberst Jr. presented as part of 2015 Hollywood Fringe Festival, previews at Theatre Of NOTE (1517 N Cahuenga Blvd) tonight, June 5 at 8pm and Saturday, June 6 at 9pm before moving to Hudson Guild Theatre (6539 Santa Monica Blvd) for Thursday performances on June 11, June 18 and June 25 at 8pm. Tickets are available for both venues at www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/2496 with some tickets for the Hudson Theatre shows also available at www.plays411.com/ray.

When Bradbury passed away on June 5, 2012 he left behind millions of what he called "my bastard children;" adults who first read him in high school. Oberst says he is one of them. "Ray Bradbury saved my childhood," says the actor "I love him. I always will. He gave me hope. He gave me worlds without limitations. That's why speaking his words exactly as he wrote them is so important to me. This is not my adaptation. It is his creation; all Bradbury. It's a story fantastic in the original sense of that word, spoken just as he wrote it - a breathless 50 minute celebration of skilled language harnessed to wild imagination. Masterful! It's a time machine. He never left his bastard children. He never will."

Pillar Of Fire, first published in 1948 and set in the year 2349, opens in a graveyard on an Earth which has been cleansed of all superstition - a place where children are not afraid of the dark. There's no Halloween, no dark literature and burials are banned; massive towers of cremation loom over cities. As Bradbury's tale begins, the last cemetery on Earth is nearly emptied when the last dead man in the world wakes up. William Lantry is a 400 year-old walking corpse filled with hate for the living and intent on teaching a sensible world the illogical meaning of fear.

Oberst, who presented an excerpt from the novella at a Halloween tribute in Bradbury's boyhood home of Waukegan, IL the year the author died, says the prose can be hypnotic for those who grew up on Bradbury, but stupefying to those whose ears aren't used to such soaring sentences. "He was in love with the world and with the wonder of the world, and the pulse of that wonder flows wildly through these paragraphs" says Oberst. "Ray Bradbury's words are like a roiling river; all one can really do is grab the sides of the raft and prepare to be thrilled."

Pillar of Fire is read with the permission of Don Congdon Associates, Inc. on behalf of Ray Bradbury Enterprises, Inc. Copyright 1948 Love Romances, Inc.

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