War of the Worlds
By H.G. Wells, adapted by Howard
Koch
The Lost World
By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, adapted by John de
Lancie and Nat Segaloff
Starring
actors from the Sci-Fi Channel, Star Trek, X-Files
Digital Press
Kit Available Here
Tour dates available in October 2009
Join L.A. Theatre Works, America’s premiere
radio theatre company, for a special back-to-back double bill of chills,
thrills and great literature as they present two masterpieces of science
fiction and adventure: War of the Worlds and The Lost World.
Recreating the breathless pace and convincing details of
Orson Welles’ infamous radio broadcast, L.A. Theatre Works makes it clear
why H.G. Wells’War of the Worlds is truly the mother of all space
invasions. Originally performed by Welles’ Mercury Theatre of the Air, the
1938 live 60-minute broadcast of an “eyewitness report” of an invasion from
Mars caused a nationwide panic. The broadcast used an updated adaptation
of the original 1898 book authored by one of Welles’ writers, Howard Koch,
who changed the time and location from Victorian England to a small town on
the East Coast of the United States in 1938 making the story more personal
for listeners. This fascinating piece still resonates today as concerns
swirl around our environment, protecting our borders, etc.
Scorned by his colleagues after making the
extraordinary claim that prehistoric animals exist and that he has seen
them, Professor Challenger leads a harrowing four-person expedition through
the remote jungles of South America to settle once and for all the validity
of his claim. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's campy adventure The Lost World
follows this scientific expedition deep into the Amazon jungle -- and
back in time. Cut off from the outside world on a primeval plateau, the
fearless explorers discover a place where dinosaurs have evolved beside
ape-men and the fate of the human race hangs in the balance. From riding
the rapids to dodging whizzing arrows, The Lost World will take you
on a ride you won't soon forget!
Under the leadership of Producing Director,
Susan Albert Loewenberg, L.A. Theatre Works (LATW) has been the foremost
radio theater company in the United States for two decades. Broadcast in
America on NPR and XM Satellite Radio, internationally on the BBC, CBC,
Voice of America and many other English language networks, LATW has
single-handedly brought the finest recorded dramatic literature into the
homes of millions. The company records the majority of its productions
annually in Los Angeles before an enthusiastic and loyal audience of season
subscribers. Works by Eugene O’Neill, David Henry Hwang, Athol Fugard,
Wendy Wasserstein, Neil Simon, David Mamet, Charlayne Woodard, Arthur
Miller, and others have been performed and recorded by LATW with casts of
the most critically acclaimed film and stage actors. On the road, LATW has
delighted audiences with its unique live radio theater style performances in
over 100 small towns and major cities, including New York, Boston,
Washington and Chicago. An L.A. Theatre Works performance is immediate,
spontaneous, and features a first-rate cast, live sound effects, and a
connection to the audience rarely felt in a traditional theater setting.
This theater… is an event.
Today, LATW’s Audio Theatre Collection includes
more than 400 classic and contemporary titles–the largest library of its
kind in the world. Much lauded, the L.A. Theatre Works Audio Theatre
Collection is available in over 8,000 libraries and has received awards from
the Audio Publishers Association, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
Publisher’s Weekly, Writer's Guild of America, American Library Association,
Grammy Awards and many others. Additionally, over 2,000 high schools
nationwide use the recordings and study guides to teach language,
literature, history and civics through LATW’s Alive & Aloud
educational outreach program. LATW’s newest initiative, The Play’s the
Thing for Higher Education, will make over 150 digitized works from our
collection available to universities and colleges across the country for use
in a variety of disciplines. For more information on these programs, LATW’s
Audio Theatre Collection, national radio broadcast information and other
exciting projects, visit www.latw.org.
The original 1994 L.A. Theatre Works audio release of War of the
Worlds starred Leonard Nimoy, Wil Wheaton, Armin Shimerman, Gates
McFaddan, Brent Spiner, and others.
The RFK Project
Written by Murray Horwitz and Jonathan Estrin
Robert F. Kennedy & the
Civil Rights Movement: A Journey
Digital Press
Kit Available Here
Tour dates available in January and February
2010
“Ladies and Gentlemen - I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute
or so this evening. Because...
I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of
our fellow
citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that
Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between
fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult
day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask
what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.”
--Robert F. Kennedy- April 4 1968, Indianapolis, IN
The 60’s in America was a decade of heroes, violence, love, death, progress,
and
disappointment. What began in 1960 as a decade of hope with the election of
John F. Kennedy, ended with America embroiled in an impossible war, her
streets filled with riots, and the history changing loss of three important
figures. It is a decade often studied, debated, celebrated, and mourned -
even a half-century later. And now, as those who lived, governed, and
shepherded change during the 60’s are passing, L.A. Theater Works presents a
major new docudrama focused on Robert Kennedy’s personal and political
journey.
In June 1968, the assassination of senator and presidential candidate Robert
F. Kennedy stunned the world. Kennedy’s death, coming so shortly after the
assassination of his colleague Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and only five
years after the death of Kennedy’s older brother John, left the nation –
regardless of political convictions – uncertain of the future during the
most tumultuous time in American history since the Civil War.
The “RFK Project” chronicles his transformation from discomfort with and
indifference towards the Civil Rights Movement to a champion and crusader.
His story provides a compelling and dramatic illumination of this crucial
decade, enabling a new generation to hear the words, feel the tension, and
explore the issues that still resonate today.
The relationship between Kennedy, King, and the movement was complicated.
Despite beginnings anchored in mistrust, the relationship ultimately evolved
as RFK’s voice became an important force in the fight for civil rights. Both
King and Kennedy made strides for civil rights through different means and
by very different paths – King with his powerful oratory and public
leadership and Kennedy, initially, through quiet tactical maneuvers behind
the closed doors of his brother’s White House. In L.A. Theatre Works’ new
docudrama, the challenges, victories,
and defeats of that period are refracted through RFK’s experiences.
Noted political correspondent Richard Reeves (Frontline, ABC News, PBS,
The New York Times, Esquire) is serving as an advisor on the project.
Biographer of the authoritative work on John F. Kennedy, President
Kennedy: Profile of Power, his experience and research will provide
historical perspective and context.
The World Premiere is set for January, 2010 at the University of Notre Dame.
The LA Theatre Works/RFK Project is a commission led by the University of
Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center and co-commissioned by the
Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland, Stanford
Lively Arts at Stanford University, and the Modlin Center for the Arts at
the University of Richmond. Additional funds provided by the Susan Raab
Simonson Commissioning Project.
About L.A. Theatre Works
Under the leadership of Producing Director, Susan Albert Loewenberg, L.A.
Theatre Works (LATW) has been the foremost radio theater company in the
United States for two decades. Broadcast in America on NPR and XM Satellite
Radio, internationally on the BBC, CBC, Voice of America and many other
English language networks, LATW has single-handedly brought the finest
recorded dramatic literature into the homes of millions. The company records
the majority of its productions annually in Los Angeles before an
enthusiastic and loyal audience of season subscribers. Works by Eugene
O’Neill, David Henry Hwang, Athol Fugard, Wendy Wasserstein, Neil Simon,
David Mamet, Charlayne Woodard, Arthur Miller, and others have been
performed and recorded by LATW with casts of the most critically acclaimed
film and stage actors. On the road, LATW has delighted audiences with its
unique live radio theater style performances in over 100 small towns and
major cities, including New York, Boston, Washington and Chicago. An L.A.
Theatre Works performance is immediate, spontaneous, and features a
first-rate cast, live sound effects, and a connection to the audience rarely
felt in a traditional theater setting. This theater… is an event.
Today, LATW’s Audio Theatre Collection includes more than 400 classic and
contemporary titles–the largest library of its kind in the world. Much
lauded, the L.A. Theatre Works Audio Theatre Collection is available in over
8,000 libraries and has received awards from the Audio Publishers
Association, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Publisher’s Weekly,
Writer's Guild of America, American Library Association, Grammy Awards and
many others.Additionally, over 2,000 high schools nationwide use the
recordings and study guides to teach language, literature, history and
civics through LATW’s Alive & Aloud educational outreach
program. LATW’s newest initiative, The Play’s the Thing for Higher
Education, will make over 150 digitized works from our collection available
to universities and colleges across the country for use in a variety of
disciplines. For more information on these programs, LATW’s Audio Theatre
Collection, national radio broadcast information and other exciting
projects, visit www.latw.org.
About the Authors
MURRAY HORWITZ has had an extraordinarily varied career in the arts
and public life. His accomplishments in the performing arts include
originating and co-writing Ain't Misbehavin', the hit Broadway
musical based on the music of Fats Waller, which won Tony, Obie, Emmy,
Grammy, and New York Drama Critics' Circle awards. He wrote the popular song
lyrics for John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby. It premiered at the
Metropolitan Opera in 1999, appeared at the Chicago Lyric Opera in 2001, and
was revived by the Met in 2002. His other Broadway and off-off-Broadway
theatrical credits include co-writing and directing Haarlem Nocturne
and Sole Sisters. Since 1998, he has been creative consultant to the
annual Mark Twain Prize ceremonies at the Kennedy Center, honoring (among
others) Richard Pryor, Jonathan Winters, Carl Reiner, Whoopi Goldberg, Bob
Newhart, Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin, Billy Crystal, and George Carlin, and
starring such luminaries as Robin Williams, Chris Rock, and Robert de Niro.
In 1997, he wrote and staged the opening and closing ceremonies of the
Presidents’ Summit for the Future of America, in Philadelphia (with
Presidents Clinton, Ford, and George H. Bush, Gen. Colin Powell, and Oprah
Winfrey). Also in 1997, he received a Governor’s Arts Award in playwriting
from the State of Maryland. Currently, he may be heard on NPR’s All Things
Considered, Talk Of the Nation, Hanukkah Lights (with Susan Stamberg), and
as a panelist on the word game show, Says You!
He was the Director and COO of the American Film Institute’s Silver Theatre
and Cultural Center from 2002 to 2009. Opened the year after Horwitz’s
appointment, the AFI Silver has successfully gone on to become a major
Washington cultural landmark. Prior to his work at AFI, Horwitz was Vice
President of Cultural Programming for National Public Radio for four years
and before that, NPR’s Director of Jazz, Classical Music, and Entertainment
Programming. He still appears as a commentator on NPR, where he won the
National Medal of Arts and three Peabody Awards: as co-writer with Wynton
Marsalis of the series, Wynton Marsalis: Making The Music, and as the
conceiver and executive producer of the series The NPR 100 and NPR’s Jazz
Profiles. Also at NPR, he started the phenomenally successful comedy news
quiz, Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me. Prior to his work at NPR, Horwitz was Acting
Director of the National Endowment for the Arts Opera-Musical Theater
Program. He has also served as deputy press secretary for the New York State
Assembly Speaker's office.
Horwitz began his career as a clown with the Ringling Brothers Barnum &
Bailey Circus, where he performed for three years. He has appeared at The
Kennedy Center, The Manhattan Theatre Club, and The New York Shakespeare
Festival/Public Theater in the one-man show, An Evening of Sholom
Aleichem. Horwitz has also had featured roles in “Kojak” and in the
motion picture Night of the Juggler. More recently, he has emceed
pianist Marian McPartland’s 85th birthday party, appeared with trumpeter
Wynton Marsalis in young people's jazz concerts in New York City and Berlin,
and made his Carnegie Hall debut as host of a concert featuring Taj Mahal,
David Benoit, and Savion Glover.
Horwitz has directed and written the scripts for many prominent events,
including several at Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School, the Kennedy
Center, and the White House. His written works also include television,
film, and theater projects for many studios and networks, including HBO,
PBS, 20th Century Fox, and Universal Pictures. He was associate producer of
Jazz Comes Home to Newport for PBS and produced the acclaimed series
of CBS television spots, “The Lost”, in cooperation with the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children. For ten years, beginning in 1989, he
directed the annual National Heritage Fellowship Concerts, hosted by (among
others) Charles Kuralt. He has written or directed concert and night club
appearances for dozens of artists, including Max Morath, Linda Ronstadt,
Margaret Whiting, Carolyn Mignini, Audrey Lavine, and André De Shields.
In 1991 he received a Gold award from the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting for the jazz documentary, Louis Armstrong: The First 90 Years,
which he produced for NPR. As a songwriter, Horwitz has won twenty ASCAP
songwriting awards, and, in addition to his work on The Great Gatsby,
has contributed lyrics to Ain’t Misbehavin’ and many revues,
including Broadway’s Upstairs At O’Neals.
In addition to several commencement addresses, Horwitz’s public speaking has
included engagements at Vassar College, Butler University, and at such
national conferences as Americans for the Arts, the Classical Association of
the Atlantic States, the American Symphony Orchestra League, the League of
Historic American Theatres, Opera America, and Western States Public Radio.
In 2005, he was chosen to introduce filmmaker Ken Burns at the annual Nancy
Hanks Lecture at the Kennedy Center.
Horwitz is a former trustee of Kenyon College, and a board member of Young
Playwrights Inc. and Yiddish of Greater Washington.. In addition, he has
been a board member for Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts and the Writers
Center, an officer of Project Return (a drug rehabilitation and human
services agency), a member of the National Jazz Service Organization's
National Jazz Task Force and the Advisory Board of the International
Association of Jazz Educators, and an adviser to the Knight Foundation’s
symphony orchestra project, The Magic of Music. In 1999, he was made a
Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France.
That same year, President Clinton acknowledged Horwitz’s leadership of NPR
Cultural Programming by awarding his division the National Medal of Arts.
Horwitz is a native of Dayton, Ohio, and lives near Washington, DC, with his
wife, mezzosoprano Lisa Miller, and the effects of their three grown
children, Charles Wolf, Ann Minna, and Alexander Thomas (the "Thomas" is for
Fats Waller). A graduate of Ohio's Kenyon College with a bachelor of arts
degree in English and drama, Horwitz received an honorary doctorate of fine
arts from his alma mater in 1992.
JONATHAN ESTRIN runs a consulting practice in education,
entertainment, and new media opportunities for nonprofit organizations. He
was the Executive Vice-President of the American Film Institute, where he
oversaw their programs in education, exhibition, preservation, and new
technologies. Prior to that he was the Dean of the College of Media Arts &
Design at Drexel University, where he dramatically expanded the offerings,
facilities and enrollment of the college. He has been a writer-producer for
30 years, and has created over 100 hours of awardwinning television series,
movies and miniseries for various broadcast and cable networks. His credits
include Cagney & Lacey, the HBO film Between Friends (starring
Elizabeth Taylor and Carol Burnett), the Showtime movie Jasper Texas
(starring Jon Voight and Lou Gossett Jr.) as well as such series as EZ
Streets, Amazing Grace (with Patti Duke), Dellaventura
(with Danny Aiello), Family Law, the pilot Sisters, and an
adaptation of Pat Conroy's novel The Water Is Wide for the Hallmark
Hall of Fame/CBS.
Estrin is also Chairman of the Board of Operation USA, an LA based
international medical relief and development agency that was named by Worth
Magazine as one of America’s Top 100 Charities.