MAY
22

Putting on a Radio Play

A Fun Way to End Your Year! 

By Cindy Marcus 

Ah, the end of the school year.  Your production went off without a hitch.  Spring is in the air.  Your students are excited to get out of school for the summer.  But you still have a couple of weeks to fill their time.  Playwright and director Cindy Marcus has created an extremely creative, educational and fun unit that will turn these last few weeks into a focused and productive project that your students will love! 

With little time, less money and a passel of young people, how are you going to fill out the last few weeks before summer?  Theater games?  Been there.  Done that.

What else is there?

Radio Theater.  This long forgotten art is unbelievably easy to do and it’s fun with students of any age!  It also works well if your group has a wide variety in ages.

Harken back with me to my yesteryear (well, actually to the winter of 2009).  My fourth grade kids were learning about Mars, and we wanted to do an arts program.  So we performed War of the Worlds.

What can you do?

Step One — Decide on the radio show.  There are all sorts of different genres:  the caped crusader, soap opera or western to name just a few.  Type “radio theater” into your search engine, and you’ll find several.  Once you’ve found a broadcast that tickles your fancy, burn it onto a CD.

Step Two — With the kids, lie back and listen.  Really.  Turn out the lights.  Find a comfy spot on the floor and just listen to the broadcast.  You’ll be amazed how quickly you get swept away.

Step Three — Discuss the show and throw in whatever trivia you’ve uncovered about it.  For us, the kids loved hearing that Americans thought we were actually being invaded, and Wells had to post announcements during the broadcast that this was all just make-believe.  Analyze the sound effects and how they might have been made.

Step Four — Present the show as written (in which case, skip to Step Five) or brave rewriting the show.  If you want to rewrite it, break things down into basic components.

We broke our play into five:  Mars, Setting, Pop Culture, Costume and Sound Effects.  Each kid chose which group he or she wanted to participate in.

• Mars — This group studied Mars.  When the original broadcast was done, of course, we hadn’t even landed on the moon.  Think of how much more we know now than we did back then!  It was these kids’ job to incorporate all that newfound knowledge into the script.  For example, we know now that Mars is cold.  So how would this change how the Martians were described in the broadcast?
• Setting — This group had to research location and decide if they wanted to keep the original setting or change it.  The original War of the Worlds was set in New Jersey, but our kids opted for New Orleans.  Now they had their work cut out for them to research the dialect and locations to incorporate into the script.
• Pop Culture — Their job was to figure out the music.  There are numerous musical cues in the original broadcast.  Since we were set in New Orleans, our musical interludes were jazz.
• Costumes — We had to know how the people of New Orleans dressed in 1939 so we could properly describe their attire in the script.
• Sound Effects — The radio play has many sound effects.  This group had to find items in everyday life that could make the sounds we needed.  Encourage your kids to think out of the box.  Does it really take a door to make the sound of a door closing?

Armed with all of this new information, which we gave the kids a day or two to assemble, we lightly rewrote the script.  So instead of Carl Phillips talking to Mr. Wilmuth, he spoke to Gris Gris.  Instead of the music being played at the Star Dust ballroom, it was played at the Baton Rouge Hotel.  You get the idea.

Step Five — Read through the script, figure out who all the characters are and cast it.  Remember, with different voices, one actor can play more than one part!

Step Six — Mount the show.  Yes, it really can be that simple!  This is where you’re going to say, “Why did I not think of this years ago?”

We opted to do our show behind the curtain.  That’s right — behind the curtain.  Our reasoning was that, when radio shows were done seventy years ago, families sat around the radio and listened.  They didn’t get to look at anything.  Storytelling, sadly, is a dying art.  We wanted to expose our audience to the wonders of this old-fashioned world.  This is wonderful for you because there’s so much that doesn’t have to be done!

• You don’t have to block.  This means a lot fewer rehearsals too!
• The kids don’t have to memorize.  They can read from the scripts since they’re behind a curtain.
• You don’t have to worry about anyone getting sick because someone else can substitute for a part since there’s no memorization or blocking.
• You don’t have to come up with costumes or props.
• You don’t have to worry about a set — unless you want to.  We made a giant radio, which cost us about $40 in materials, so that the audience could get a more authentic experience.  But honestly, a couple of rocking chairs and a plant work fine.

Besides the optional set, the only things you’ll need are:

• Four to five standing mics.  Two should be dedicated to sound effects, music and such.  The others are for the performers.  Set them up in a line.
• Your sound effect materials.
• A CD player to play any incidental music.  We were fortunate and had kids who could play instruments.

Run through the show as many often as you have time for.  Focus on diction, pacing, voice and working with a mic.

Step Seven — Perform it.  For our performance, we had our giant radio preset in front of the curtain, but then we left the curtain open so the audience coming in could see the mics and believe they would see the actors.  As the show began, we had the actors walk in holding their scripts as if everything would be visible.  Then, with our actors placed at the mics, we closed the curtain.  The actors worked through the script unseen as the audience listened!  At the end, we opened the curtains so the actors could take a bow.

If you’re feeling industrious you can add extra touches.

• A program that looks like a newspaper from the 1930’s with comics created by your kids and stories from that era.
• Ushers dressed in pj’s.  Throw some blankets and pillows on the floor so the audience will feel they’re in a living room.  Encourage them to lie back and close their eyes as they listen to your program.
• Sell milk and cookies.

Step Eight — Party and pat yourself on the back!  You just filled those last weeks of the school year with a fun, easy production that got the kids excited about an art form that is fading away.  I guarantee at the party they’ll be asking, “What radio show are we going to do next year?”