Strange Adventures presents Orson Welles'
The War of The Worlds
by Howard Koch A dramatic night of drama presented by Eastern Front Theatre
Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 8pm
Eastern Front Theatre presents
A Hal-Con Special Event
For one night only!
Orson Welles'
The War of The Worlds
by Howard Koch
A staged reading recreating the infamous 1938 Mercury Theatre live radio broadcast sponsored by Strange Adventures
The event takes place in the Summit Suite, on the 8th Floor of the World Trade & Convention Centre, Argyle St entrance.
The event is a Hal-Con special event but requires a separate ticket to attend. You do not need to be a Hal-Con guest to see The War of The Worlds.
Seating is general admission.
Background:
"The War of the Worlds" is an episode of the American radio drama anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on Sunday, October 30, 1938, and aired over theColumbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds (1898). It became famous for allegedly causing mass panic, although the reality of the panic is disputed as the program had relatively few listeners.
The first two-thirds of the one-hour broadcast was presented as a series of simulated news bulletins, which suggested an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. The illusion of realism was furthered because the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a sustaining show without commercial interruptions, and the first break in the program came almost thirty minutes into the broadcast. Popular legend holds that some of the radio audience may have been listening to Edgar Bergen and tuned in to "The War of the Worlds" during a musical interlude, thereby missing the clear introduction that the show was a drama, but recent research suggests this only happened in rare instances.[
In the days following the adaptation, there was widespread outrage in the media. The program's news-bulletin format was described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast and calls for regulation by the Federal Communications Commission. The episode secured Welles's fame as a dramatist.
