Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Rep
It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play - Stackner Cabaret Art
Art for 'It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play' at the Stackner Cabaret
What would the world look like if you’d never been born—or threw your life away in a moment of deep despair? That’s one takeaway from Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life. And there are others in a story where humor walks with pathos and the better angels of human nature defy the powerful forces arrayed against the happy ending.
Photo courtesy of Milwaukee Rep
Daniel Arana and David Flores - Stackner Cabaret
Daniel Arana and David Flores rehearse with the foley board for 'It's a Wonderful Life: A Life Radio Play'
The Milwaukee Rep will transpose Joe Landry’s adaptation of Capra and his source material, Philip Van Doren Stern’s short story, into It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play. Director Jonathan Hetler explains that Landy thought a long time about adapting the film for the stage before deciding to reconceive it in a medium that rivaled the movies for audiences in 1946—a radio play performed live with an audience in the studio.
“What’s special about It’s a Wonderful Life are the words,” Hetler says. “If you take away all the glitz and glamor, what comes through is the focus on the story—the spirit of George Bailey.”
Jimmy Stewart unforgettably embodied that spirit for the screen as the good neighbor, the compassionate banker, undermined by the greedy financier, Mr. Potter. George cared about his town. For Potter, the town and its inhabitants were there to be exploited. The message remains vital today, given the current climate of corruption and avarice.
In the Live Radio Play, a cast of five actors— Daniel Arana, Eva Nimmer, Melinda Parret, David Flores and Wade Elkins—will play five actors from the ‘40s including George, his wife Mary, Mr. Potter and multiple characters from the story, just as it was done on radio shows in that era. The Rep’s production is set at Christmastime, 1946, with the radio cast all dressed up and ready for a holiday party once the show is wrapped.
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“We were looking for actors whose versatility allows more opportunities,” Hetler says, including playing piano and other musical instruments as well as executing the all-important sound effects, an essential element of radio drama.
A lot of research went into how to make those sounds live on stage, not synthesized and prerecorded as is usual nowadays. “When Clarence jumps into the river, we take a bucket and push it into another bucket of water,” Hetler explains. Feet walking on freshly fallen snow? Cast members will tread on breakfast cereal strewn across a metal pan. For the radio audience of the ‘30s and ‘40s, sound effects triggered visualizations of the characters moving through their settings. The audience at the Stackner “will get to see how it’s made,” Hetler says. The cast will also perform advertising jingles, just as their real-life predecessors did in the golden age of radio drama.
Hetler hadn’t watched the movie for several years before accepting the assignment to direct It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play. “I forgot just how eternal the message is,” he says. “The movie is set at Christmas, but it’s more about community, humanity—that every life is valuable and has purpose, that the greatest wealth is measured by the friends one has, not the possessions one has attained. It’s a great reminder of those things any time of the year.”
The Milwaukee Repertory Theatre will perform It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play October 31-December 21 at the Stackner Cabaret, 108 E. Wells St. For tickets and more information, visit milwaukeerep.com/visit/venues/stackner-cabaret
