Original Adaptation A Special Offering At TheatreWorks

NEW MILFORD — Just in time for Halloween, TheatreWorks New Milford will present a staged reading of The Next Voice You Fear...” on Thursday, October 30, and Friday, October 31, at 8 pm.

The Next Voice You Fear... is an original stage adaptation by the Danbury playwright Tom Libonate of the infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast of Halloween 1938. Approximately six million people had tuned into the broadcast, and nearly two million listeners believed the terrifying news they heard to be true – that a Martian invasion of the Earth was underway.

The story is not limited to the confines of CBS Studio One in New York City, where Orson Welles and his “Mercury Theatre on the Air” arguably perpetrated the greatest mass-hoax in American history. The play goes far beyond, painting a portrait of a nation – from San Francisco to Providence, Rhode Island – gripped with panic in the face of a horrifying tale told through the bold new medium of the age, radio.

The Next Voice You Fear... builds on the original, chilling War of the Worlds radio script, penned by the late Howard Koch and brought to bear by Orson Welles in his original broadcast. The broadcast is also an adaptation of the 1898 novel by British author H.G. Wells, a novel many believe to be the first “serious” science-fiction tale ever put to paper.

“This legend is to Halloween as Ebeneezer Scrooge is to Christmas,” says the play’s author Tom Libonate. “Welles’ dramatic and technical approach to frightening the country was unheard of in 1938. He took radio – a new medium that people trusted for real news – and turned the box and its authentic contents on its ear to scare millions of trusted listeners practically to death. What better time for that than Halloween?”

“The play and the broadcast are actually more relevant today than they were over 60 years ago,” said TheatreWorks artistic director Bill Hughes. “When one sees the play, one can’t help but recall more recent horrifying events that, unfortunately, were actually occurring when they were broadcast. Today it’s not so difficult to imagine that the fiction people were absorbing in 1938 could have been genuine, simply because of the realistic manner in which it was presented.”

The TheatreWorks reading will feature Jonathan Ross and KC Ross of Thomaston, Mark Feltch of Newtown, Kip Jones of Ridgefield, Keir Hansen of Norwalk, Brad Blake and Tom Libonate of Danbury, and Bruce Thomson of Carmel, N.Y.

Tickets for both shows are $5 for general admission with seasonal refreshments before and after the show. Reservations can be made at www.TheatreWorks.us or by calling the box office at 860-350-6863. The theater is at 5 Brookside Avenue, just off Route 202 (next to M&B’s IGA) in New Milford.