By SAGELYN BUDY
Student Reporter
Northwestern theatre has gone back to 1938 to a time when radio was the center of entertainment.
“War of the Worlds: The Panic Broadcast” is commemorating the 85th anniversary of the “Mercury Theater of the Air’s” famous 1938 radio play. Northwestern theater’s cast of 22 will be presenting the play within the play in Herold Hall Auditorium on Oct. 26-28.
Mickey Jordan, instructor of technical theater and Herod Hall facilities manager, explained that in 1938, a man named Orson Welles was a part of a weekly radio theater show that people could tune into.
The last broadcast of the season on the radio show was called, “War of the Worlds” which involved aliens invading the earth.
People that tuned into the radio station began to mistake the episode for real news because of the way the radio show presented it. People were in a mass panic before the broadcast was even over, Jordan said.
The historical play is a different challenge for the student actors because everything such as clothing, props, accents and actions have to reflect 1938 and the real people of that time, he said.
Jordan explained that the most difficult part of getting ready to produce the play is time.
