Category Archives: Live Shows

Radio Free Frights! — Portland Tribune

by

Radio free frights

Willamette Radio Workshop gets ready for some Halloween broadcasts of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”

BY PAUL DUCHENE Issue date: 10/25/2002

The Tribune

Orson Welles’ radio career is inextricably linked with “The War of the Worlds.” This 1938 production of the H.G. Wells sci-fi story caused widespread panic when its broadcast was thought to be actual news bulletins of an alien invasion.

But “Worlds” was actually Welles’ 29th show with the Mercury Theatre of the Air. He’d been doing radio dramas since 1936, and for a year he was the main character voice in “The Shadow” radio serial.

He would go on to produce and act in more than 100 additional dramas before Hollywood beckoned in 1940.

Sam Mowry’s Willamette Radio Workshop group successfully revived “War of the Worlds” last year at Halloween, filling the CoHo Theatre in Northwest Portland for a midnight performance.

“We had 50 no-shows, and it was still full — thank God they didn’t come,” he says.

This year, Mowry’s crew is tackling Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” which Welles adapted in July 1938. They’ll perform it live at the White Eagle Saloon, McMenamins Grand Lodge in Forest Grove and the Kennedy School in the days leading up to Halloween.

“Welles got the rights to it at the last minute — he was going to launch the season with ‘Treasure Island,'” Mowry says. “He and John Houseman sat in an all-night cafe cutting up seven copies of the book and gluing pages together to make the script. They argued around the clock for 36 hours, eating and drinking the whole time, then dropped off the pages at the typing pool and left Welles’ secretary to pay the bill.”

Mowry follows up with a prize-winning piece of trivia about English theater manager Bram Stoker, who wrote the story in 1897 and made vampire a household word. Vampires continue to enthrall 100 years later, immortalized in movies and television.

“Bram Stoker was (actor-impresario) Henry Irving’s stage manager, and one of the first things he did was offer Irving the play of ‘Dracula,'” Mowry says. “Irving wouldn’t touch it, and many people believed that it was because the character of Dracula was based on him.

“Think about it,” Mowry says. “We accept the idea of vampires, but when the story was written, nobody knew what they were. Here’s this great story: Basically, a real estate salesman goes to close a deal in Eastern Europe — and instead this evil is loosed on the world!”

Welles’ script runs 55 minutes and can be heard online at http://www.scifi.com/set/playhouse/dracula/ though it’s not a high-quality recording. But the adaptation rushes along, with foley sound effects creating the atmosphere of doom.

Radio drama is a very mobile production, Mowry says.

“It’s not like theater, where you have six weeks of rehearsal and a six-week run,” he says. “Here we can do five shows with a cast of 12. It takes a half-hour to set up a one-hour show and a half-hour to break it down. The sound equipment is the biggest thing.”

And Halloween horror stories are perfect for radio drama, Mowry says. “It’s the power of suggestion. Everybody carries their own private hell with them.’

Contact Paul Duchene at pduchene@portlandtribune.com.

ORSON WELLES’ ADAPTATION OF BRAM STOKER’S “DRACULA”

When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 26

Where: White Eagle Saloon, 836 N. Russell St., 503-282-6810

When: 2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 27

Where: McMenamins Grand Lodge, 3505 Pacific Ave. Forest Grove, 505-992-9533

When: 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 31

Where: The Kennedy School, 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave. 503-249-3983

Cost: $3 at Grand Lodge, other performances free

War of the Worlds

by

The Willamette Radio Workshop in conjunction with CoHo Theatre presented Orson Welles’ production of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds The 1938 “Panic Broadcast” This was a live recreation of the original broadcast that shook a nation on the brink of war. The script, a loose adaptation of H. G. Welles SCI-FI classic by Howard Koch (who went on to write Casablanca) tells the story of Martians invading the Earth.

The program was presented as a series of live news feeds that created a touch of realism by breaking into a placid evening of dance music. Although the program clearly stated at the beginning and at the half way point that it was a radio drama, most of the country was tuned into the Chase and Sandborn Hour with Edgar Bergen and Charley Macarthy, the most popular radio tandem in the country. However, Nelson Eddy was the musical guest that night and when he began to sing a couple of not-too-popular songs, the radio audience began to spin those dials, coming into the War of the Worlds broadcast after the disclaimer. The subsequent panic, from listeners who took the radio play for real, traumatized several cities across the eastern seaboard. It is important to note that no one was killed or killed themselves, but rumors of such activity spread as fast as the rumors of Martian invasion. The ensuing notoriety made Orson Welles a star and showed the devastating power of radio in the new age of mass communication.

WRW’s 12 actors, using live foley sound effects, live music and a plethora of old school analog audio magic sought to reproduce the excitement and drama with a production faithful to the spirit of ” live Radio.” The sell-out crowds to WRW’s production of War of the Worlds enjoyed take a look at a vibrant entertainment medium and this opportunity to look back at the best Halloween prank ever pulled on the American Public.

If you haven’t seen live radio, you ain’t heard nothing yet.

Willamette Radio Cast and Credits

Cast:

Sam A. Mowry – Orson Welles / Professor Person
Chris Porter – Carl Phillips
Mary Robinette Harrison – New York Announcer
Solomon Grundy – Announcer #2
Amy Gray – Wilmuth
Margie Boule – Announcer #3
Mark Twohy – Operator # 5
Mark Homayoun – Stranger
Tim McKennie – Announcer #4
Jodi Eichelberger – Mercury Announcer/Captain Lansing

Sound Design – Marty Gallagher, Amy Gray
Lights – Sally Lawson
Box Office – Alyson Ayn Osborn

Producer – Robert Kowal
Director – Sam A. Mowry

Special Thanks: CoHo Theatre, Gary Cole, Liane, The Cast and Crew of Spinning into Butter, Amy Gray, Marty Gallagher, Cindy McGean, Atticus Mowry, Michael Gandsey & T2 Audio and all our family and friends that make our work possible.

War of the Worlds — Portland Tribune

by

Martians ready to invade

Willamette Radio Workshop brings back “War of the Worlds”

BY PAUL DUCHENE Issue date: 10/26/2001

The Tribune

You might find it hard to believe as an adult that you were ever scared of things that go bump in the night.

But if there’s a little flicker in the back of your mind, you might enjoy Willamette Radio Workshop’s live re-creation of Orson Welles’ radio broadcast from Oct. 30, 1938, of “The War of the Worlds,” which takes over CoHo Theater on Saturday.

Welles’ Mercury Theatre managed to overamplify the story of Martians invading Earth by presenting it as a series of live news broadcasts. The resulting panic among listeners led to a front-page story in The New York Times and subsequent federal restrictions on radio broadcasts.

The very idea of radio terror seems far distant from the present, only a month after millions of viewers watched close to 5,000 people die on morning television when the towers of New York’s World Trade Center were destroyed.

But radio is theater of the mind, and the hobgoblins we create can be scarier than reality, however awful it is.

Portland actor Sam Mowry staged a reading of “The War of the Worlds” last Halloween with such success that he resolved to re-create Welles’ production.

“I did it last year with radio and TV people, and we were going to repeat it but it fell through because of conflicting schedules,” Mowry said. “Meanwhile I’d started Willamette Radio Workshop and everybody said: “Why don’t we do it?”

Twelve actors sound off Mowry aims to duplicate Welles’ hourlong CBS production with 12 actors and live Foley sound effects (named for Jack Foley, the technician who developed them).

Welles’ production, based on H.G. Wells’ 1898 book, was announced as a drama before it started, but the problems began when people switched to the 8 p.m. show in progress.

Starting with a news flash about explosions on the planet Mars, bulletins and scene broadcasts followed, describing a meteor hitting a farm at Grovers Mill, N.J. The meteor was then revealed as a metal cylinder from which strange creatures emerged firing death rays.

Meanwhile, large numbers of listeners had been listening to “The Chase and Sanborn Hour” with Edgar Bergen and dummy Charlie McCarthy on NBC, and many changed stations at the first musical break, rather than listen to Dorothy Lamour sing “Two Sleepy People.”

What they dialed into was Frank Readick as newscaster Carl Phillips describing the scene at the meteor as the Martians emerge. Police can be heard shouting in the background as Readick gradually loses his cool. Readick said later he based his delivery on the reporter who had witnessed the destruction of the Hindenburg only 18 months earlier.

Terrified voices can be heard as the din increases and the death ray guns are firing. Then abruptly, there’s dead silence. After Readick’s “death,” bulletins and news reports describe the Martian advance across New Jersey and nerve gas attacks on New York City.

(Those who listened to more of the show might have wondered exactly how the Martians managed to wipe out the 7,000-member-strong New Jersey National Guard and march clear across the East Coast in 15 minutes.)

Panic reigns At the break, the station announced that the show was a drama   but the damage had been done. Even though The Associated Press and New York and New Jersey police announced there was nothing to worry about, police stations and newspapers were swamped with calls, and panicked listeners rushed into the street. The New York Times alone received 875 calls.

Analyst Hadley Cantril estimated in a 1966 study that 20 percent of the audience exhibited signs of mass hysteria. Phone calls to friends and relatives spread the terror across the country, leading to scenes like the man in Pittsburgh who returned home to find his wife in the bathroom holding a bottle of poison and screaming, “I’d rather die this way.”

“The War of the Worlds” is seldom aired, though there is an original tape. Station WKBW in Buffalo, N.Y., successfully updated the play using its news staff and DJs and local settings in 1968.

“We won’t be broadcasting this one either,” Mowry said, recalling a 1950 broadcast in Caracas, Venezuela, that was so successful an angry mob stormed the station and burned it down.

Contact Paul Duchene at pduchene@portlandtribune.com.

“The War of the Worlds”

What: Live re-creation of Orson Welles’ broadcast

Where: CoHo Theater, 2257 N.W. Raleigh St.; 503-295-3565

When: 11 p.m. Saturday

Admission: $5