2 Sci-Fi Masterpieces Arrive At The Phillips Center 4/1

Theatre Works, America's premier radio theater company, is back on the road, bringing two masterpieces of science fiction and adventure to the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts on Wednesday, April 1 at 7:30 p.m. War of the Worlds and The Lost World, which played last fall to great audience and critical acclaim, heads out for the spring leg of a seven-month national tour through May 2. John de Lancie ("Q" on Star Trek: The Next Generation) directs the double bill.

War of the Worlds and The Lost World stars veteran stage, film and television actors Diane Adair (a recurring alien on Babylon 5, the feature film UFOria with Harry Dean Stanton, Fred Ward and Cindy Williams); Josh Clark (Star Trek Voyager, Heroes, ER, L.A. Law); Kyle Colerider-Krugh (Primal Fear, Secretary, Numb3rs, Without A Trace, Third Rock From the Sun, Seinfeld); Peter McDonald (Becker, Wings, ER); Kate Steele (Matchstick Men, Frasier); Tom Virtue (Star Trek Voyager, Seventh Heaven); and Kenneth Alan Williams ("Dr. Gabriel" on ER, Will & Grace, Dharma & Greg, Caroline In The City, Chicago Hope, Jamie Foxx Show).

War of the Worlds recreates the breathless pace and convincing details of Orson Welles' infamous 1938 radio broadcast by his Mercury Theatre of the Air. The live 60-minute broadcast of an "eyewitness report" of an invasion from Mars caused a nationwide panic as listeners, who thought they were listening to a real newscast, attempted to flee. The Mercury Theatre used an updated adaptation of H.G. Wells' 1898 novel by Howard Koch, who changed the time and location from Victorian England to a small town on the East Coast of the United States in 1938, making the story more personal for listeners. "Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact. Many Flee Homes to Escape 'Gas Raid From Mars'," read the front page headline of the New York Times the morning after the Halloween-eve broadcast.

"H.G. Wells wrote the story as a metaphor for how mankind was destroying the planet through acts of war and imperialism," explains L.A. Theatre Works producing director Susan Loewenberg. "As adapted in 1938 by Koch, it foreshadowed the advancing threat of Nazism. Today, the work still resonates as we take a deeper look at global warming and other environmental concerns - all the ways that we are becoming the weapon of our own destruction."

"The story and themes of War of the Worlds may be sobering - but watching the actors recreate the behind-the-scenes world of that historic 1938 broadcast is a lot of fun," she continues. "Audiences can expect to see all kinds of amazing things happen on stage - including the actors creating all the sound effects themselves. They use all sorts of things you would never expect to make all kinds of crazy sounds."

On the other hand, The Lost World, adapted by John de Lancie and Nat Segaloff from a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is a hilarious spoof. Professor Challenger leads a harrowing four-person expedition through remote South American jungles to settle the validity of his claim that prehistoric animals still exist. The campy pulp adventure classic follows this scientific expedition deep into the Amazon rain forest and back in time. Cut off from the outside world on a primeval plateau, the fearless explorers discover a place where dinosaurs have evolved beside ape-men and the fate of the human race hangs in the balance.

L.A. Theatre Works uses innovative technologies and top actors to produce and preserve significant works of dramatic literature on audio. LATW's syndicated, weekly radio theater series can be heard on NPR stations nationwide. With its emphasis on the spoken word and ingenious live sound effects, L.A. Theatre Works invites the audience to take part in creating the imaginative world of the story as it is being told.

Under the leadership of Producing Director, Susan Albert Loewenberg, L.A. Theatre Works has been the foremost radio theater company in the United States for two decades. Broadcast in the U.S. on NPR and XM Satellite Radio, internationally on the BBC, CBC, Voice of America and many other English language networks, LATW has single-handedly brought the finest recorded dramatic literature into the homes of millions. The company records the majority of its productions annually in Los Angeles before an enthusiastic and loyal audience of season subscribers. Today LATW's Audio Theatre Collection includes more than 400 classic and contemporary titles - the largest library of its kind in the world. Much lauded, the L.A. Theatre Works Audio Theatre Collection is available in over 8,000 libraries and has received awards from the Audio Publishers Association, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Publisher's Weekly, Writer's Guild of America, American Library Association, Grammy Awards and many others. Additionally, over 2,000 high schools nationwide use the recordings and study guides to teach language, literature, history and civics through LATW's Alive & Aloud educational outreach program. LATW's newest initiative, The Play's the Thing for Higher Education, will make over 150 digitized works from our collection available to universities and colleges across the country for use in a variety of disciplines.

 

Launched in 2005, L.A. Theatre Works' National Touring Program has expanded the company's mission to provide access to significant works of theater by audiences nationwide. From originally commissioned topical docudramas such as The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial and Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers to classic comedies such as Private Lives, L.A. Theatre Works employs a slightly expanded version (which includes costumes and minimal sets) of the same unique live radio theater style performance presented in its regular ten-play The Play's the Thing live in-performance series at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Featuring first-rate casts and live sound effects, LATW's touring productions have delighted and challenged audiences at performing arts centers and theatres in over 125 small towns and major cities across the nation, providing audiences with an intimate, spontaneous experience rarely felt in traditional theatrical settings. In addition, L.A. Theatre Works collaborates with presenting venues and local public radio stations to provide additional community outreach and special programming including one-time broadcasts of the performance, panel discussions with the actors, directors, writers and leading subject experts, and performances for local area high school students.

For more information about the national tour of War of the Worlds and The Lost World, visit www.latw.org.

 

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