Orson Welles’ radio martians take the stage

Laura McCoy Guest Writer

What would you do if you turned on the radio and heard a newsflash about an alien invasion of Earth?

Americans across the country faced this question head-on in 1938 when Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre on the Air radio program aired a faux-newscast radio interpretation of H.G. Welles’ 1898 science fiction novel, The War of the Worlds. For those familiar with the program, which also aired takes on classic literature such as Huckleberry Finn, A Tale of Two Cities and Dracula, it was nothing but entertainment. But for those who tuned in mid-program, it was all too real.

Ben Chase ’10 has transformed this radio broadcast into a stage play, produced by Unbound, which will premier at Vassar on April 10-12 in the Susan Stein Shiva Theater. Chase’s production fuses the radio script and samples from Naomi Iizuka’s 2000 biographical play about Welles, also entitled “The War of the Worlds.”

The story begins when a newsflash interrupts a normal evening’s radio program to announce that Martians have invaded the earth. Havoc erupts when alien machinery destroys everything and everyone in sight, and CBS reporters continue to update listeners until the announcers and all of New York City are wiped out.

“The radio show is one huge Halloween prank that Welles pulled on the United States,” Chase said. “It is conducted so that it sounds like a normal radio broadcast with breaking news interruptions about martians.”

Though it disturbed many Americans and triggered one of the better-known instances of mass hysteria in 20th-century American history, the controversy catapulted Welles to fame. Three years later he directed, co-wrote, produced and starred in Citizen Kane, which critics today still call one of the greatest films ever made. Its controversial filmmaking style and Welles’ clear directorial hand throughout became an example of the auteur theory that inspired the revolutionary and New Wave French cinema of the 1950s.

“The show will use strong sound and lighting effects to help immerse the audience in the overwhelming nature of the show,” Chase said. “The Vassar community I hope will enjoy the pleasure of trying to live through a moment in history that we will recreate.”

Both Chase and Max Fagin ’10, who plays Professor Pierson, pointed to the production’s historical value.

“Many people might not realize just how big radio theater was in the early 20th century,” Fagin said.

Being a part of a radio-centric play “made me think about how radio shows were done back in the day and how people delivered difficult news, how much emotion they let through,” said Samantha Allen ’11, who plays a CBS newscaster in War of the Worlds.

“Not only is it great entertainment and one of the dirtiest tricks ever played, but I feel Welles wanted listeners to know how influential media is, how easily it can be manipulated and how dangerous that influence is.”

Fagin added, “‘The War of the Worlds’ is to science fiction what ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is to the genre of romance. I hope that by listening to the radio broadcast, the audience might gain an appreciation of the power that a convincing fiction can hold over people.”