Editor’s Note Oct.31: Just in time for a rainy Halloween night, producer Barry Conway confirms that you can now listen to the “War of the Worlds: Battle of Brudenell” on your favourite podcast app. Just look for The Opeongo Line, or CLICK HERE to listen. As Conway says, “Why not put a little bit of spook in your Halloween?”
Halloween may never be same in the Upper Ottawa Valley, if The Opeongo Radio Flyers have their way. This new group of podcast performers, an off-shoot of the very successful Opeongo Readers’ Theatre, are offering up a fresh adaptation of Orson Welles’s famous War of the Worlds radio drama that once scared the bejeepers out of listening audiences throughout North America. Many Canadians heard the original radio show, and more than a few radio stations since have tried to repeat the masterful fake news hoax that had Martians landing in Grovers Mill, New Jersey the night before Halloween, 1938.
Only this time, The Opeongo Radio Flyers will have their aliens land near Brudenell and the year of the invasion will be 1958 so that the Avro Arrow can help out in the battle, as well as a number of local characters and institutions, sadly no longer with us. They include the then nationally-known Killaloe Weather Station, the RCAF Radar Station at Foymount, and Avro Arrow test pilot, Jan Zurakowski.
The 74-minute production will be performed as a free dress rehearsal at the old Barry’s Bay Train Station at 7:00 p.m. Monday, October 28 but a command performance will begin at 7:00 p.m., Wednesday, October 30 at the Royal Canadian Legion in Cobden where admission will be $10.00 with all proceeds going to support the Whitewater Region Public Library. This latter performance will be recorded as a podcast and uploaded to The Opeongo Line within 24 hours so listeners world-wide can enjoy it free of charge on Halloween.
“It’s a bit of imaginative lunacy, complete with 21st century sci-fi sound efforts, and a whole host of historically accurate local references,” said Barry Conway, writer and producer of the project. “We’re also betting that more than a few people might enjoy having Parliament blown to smithereens by a Martian heat ray, considering the outcome of the recent federal election.
“Like The Opeongo Readers’ Theatre, the Opeongo Radio Flyers are dedicated to raising both funds and awareness on behalf of rural public libraries,” said Conway. “The Readers Theatre does that by performing short stories, poems, etc. drawn from classic literature, as well as local history found in eye-witness accounts, letters, diaries, etc., but the Radio Flyers are solely in the business of producing one-act plays and, in particular, radio dramas and comedies that are either relevant to our local culture and heritage, or that can be adapted as such.”
The “War of the Worlds: Battle of Brudenell” is the first of six such shows that the Opeongo Radio Flyers will be performing over the next six months. When the shows are done for their patron, the non-profit Station Keepers MV of Barry’s Bay, admission is free or by donation. When they are done for local public libraries such as the one in the Whitewater Region, the library boards can charge an admission fee with all proceeds going to that particular rural library.
“We’re not really in the business of making money for ourselves; we just have a lot of fun doing what we love to do,” he said. “And from the success of The Station Keepers’ podcast, The Opeongo Line, I’d say our live and podcast audiences seem to love what we do just as much.” Conway estimates that since launching The Opeongo Readers Theatre podcast in March, 2018, more than 10,000 people have listened to their shows world-wide. “It’s a curious thing to know that there are folks in Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States and throughout Canada who find our local history and culture as fascinating as we do.”
The performance is part of the Whitewater Region Library Board’s Encounters with Great Writers Series. Conway’s adaptation, as Orson Welles’ version, are both based on H.G. Wells’s novel, The War of the Worlds published in 1898 – a classic work of literature that remains to this day one of the seminal achievements of Science Fiction.
Conway,B.T. (2019,Oct.18) The Opeongo Radio Flyers proudly presents “War of the Worlds: The Battle of Brudenell” [press release]
Featured photo nytimes.com