Studio Theatre LI to Present PANIC ON THE FRONT PAGE in January
The Mercury Theater of the Air broadcast about a Martian invasion, the process of putting it together and the reaction that followed, as well as myths about it and the media reaction, are the topic of 'Panic on the Front Page,' a new play being presented by Studio Theatre Long Island Jan. 13 to Jan. 29.
SITI Company Concludes Finale Season With RADIO PLAY Tour
The award-winning SITI Company, a leading New York-based theater ensemble celebrated locally and internationally, concludes its Finale 30th Anniversary Season with the Radio Play tour, a series of three theatrical works inspired by the groundbreaking radio shows Orson Welles created with the Mercury Theatre in the late 1930s.
BWW Review: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS at Kentucky Shakespeare
On October 30, 1938, just before 8:00 pm, Americans gathered around the radio to listen to Mercury Theatre On The Air, an anthology series produced and hosted by Orson Welles. That evening's program, scripted by Howard Koch, was a modern-day adaptation of H.G. Well's The War of the Worlds, one of the first tales of alien invasion, in which Martians emerged from meteors to lay waste to all of the Earth's civilizations. Except that Koch, with help from producers John Houseman, Paul Stewart and Welles himself, structured the program to play, at least in the first moments, as special news bulletins interrupting a normal performance by a dance orchestra. The ruse seems thin even for the time, but Hitler had 'annexed' Austria a few months earlier, and was threatening to do more, so the program struck a chord and the resulting panic in the area in close proximity - Welles' Martians landed in a New Jersey pasture, sent East Coast residents scurrying across bridges and clogging highways.