{"id":2819,"date":"2011-04-30T14:04:32","date_gmt":"2011-04-30T18:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mondomark.com\/wordpress\/?p=1911"},"modified":"2011-04-30T14:04:32","modified_gmt":"2011-04-30T18:04:32","slug":"orson-welles%e2%80%99-war-of-the-worlds-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2819","title":{"rendered":"Orson Welles\u2019 War of the Worlds: Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The face that punked a nation would like a hug, please.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

On the eve of Halloween in 1938, Orson Welles mounted a fake newscast of Martians invading Earth, and he managed to terrify a significant chunk of Americans into believing little green men had landed and were starting to massacre humanity. Or maybe it was the Nazis, as others believed.<\/p>\n

Adapted from the classic H.G. Wells novel by Howard Koch and performed by Welles\u2019 Mercury Theatre troupe for CBS, The War of the Worlds<\/strong> was either the ultimate prank taken far too seriously, or it simply captured the mass fear of invading forces just a year before the outbreak of WWII.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, you can\u2019t blame Welles for sticking to his guns and performing the show without any mid-drama disclaimers to alert listeners that the whole broadcast was ‘someone behind a white sheet shouting ‘Boo!’ but he did establish a significant precedent: that if you package things correctly, some people will believe almost anything<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To prove the point (or rather, exploit the novelty of creating a bit of infamy), a Spanish version of Koch\u2019s script was performed in Ecuador in 1949<\/a>, with tragic results; and some local American stations took a poke at the concept, notably Buffalo\u2019s WKBW in 1968<\/a> with their own adaptation.<\/p>\n

In addition to other re-mountings of the 1938 production, there was also Without Warning<\/strong>, an original teleplay in 1994 (aired by CBS) in which the concept was transposed to a live CNN-type news feed.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most intriguing re-conceptualization of the script happened this past March thru April Fool\u2019s weekend at Toronto\u2019s Harbourfront World Stage, where The Art of Time Ensemble<\/a> not only performed the radio play in front of an audience, but designed the production to resemble a fly-on-the-wall experience, with live foley and band<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Prior TV dramatizations of the mass-hysteria that pricked a nation \u2013 Studio One\u2019s 1957 production of The Night America Trembled<\/strong>, and the 1974 TVM The Night That Panicked America<\/strong> \u2013 featured recreations of the radio studio environment in excerpts or vignettes, but this 2011 performance gave audiences an opportunity to experience the complete play, and a sense of the workings involved in a live radio performance, with the actors, sound effects man, and musicians just a few meters away.<\/p>\n

Directed by Andrew Burashko, AOTE\u2019s production was also preceded by a half-hour tribute to composer Bernard Herrmann, who scored \/ conducted the Mercury Theatre dramas in addition to classic Alfred Hitchcock films such as Vertigo<\/strong> (1958), North by Northwest<\/a><\/strong> (1959), and Psycho<\/strong> (1960).<\/p>\n

(This year marks the centenary of the composer\u2019s birthday, and I\u2019ll have a set of DVD reviews of classic Herrmann-scored films still unavailable in Region 1 land, but of course, widely<\/em> available in Spain, because unlike Fox in America, Spain\u2019s home video labels realize the classic film market hasn\u2019t collapsed on a global scale, and people don\u2019t<\/em> want to re-buy All About Eve<\/a><\/strong>, An Affair to Remember<\/a><\/strong>, Patton<\/strong>, and The Sound of Music<\/strong> for the 4th time<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

So in this first part of a new series (Yes! Another one!), I\u2019ve uploaded a review of the AOTE production, plus an interview with director Andrew Burashko<\/a> [M<\/a>], who discusses the project\u2019s genesis, the Herrmann suite, and his plans to mount a live version of \u201cI send you this cadmium red,\u201d with Daniel Brooks directing Gavin Bryars\u2019 dramatization of the correspondences between John Berger and John Christie.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019ve added reviews of The Night America Trembled<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>], part of VSC\u2019s Studio One<\/strong> 3-volume series released in 2002 on DVD; and Without Warning<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>], which did get a fleeting DVD (and now OOP) release via Madacy, but I happened to videotape when it was broadcast by Hamilton\u2019s CHCH for Hallow\u2019s Eve.<\/p>\n

Yes, I’m that olde, and I’ve a storage locker of this ephemera that I’ll continue to mine until invading little green men ring the doorbell, masquerading as Girl Guide cookie vendors.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor
\nKQEK.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this first part examining Orson Welles’ 1938 radio drama of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, I’ve a review of The Art of Time Ensemble’s 2011 stage production + director Andrew Burashko, and related reviews of The Night America Trembled (1957) and Without Warning (1994)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[97,440,432,435,441,431],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-Jt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}