Arts & Lectures
2001-2002 Performing Arts Season News Release
For Immediate Release

September 18, 2001
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu

SITI Company dramatizes Orson Welles’ infamous radio broadcast in War of the Worlds—The Radio Play at UCSB

Summary Facts:

Anne Bogart’s SITI Company will perform War of the Worlds—The Radio Play, a stunning evening of dramatic illusions concocted before your eyes, on Friday, October 26 at 8 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. This play recreates the frenzied in-studio action when Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater of the Air scared a large portion of the nation silly on October 30, 1938 with visions of a violent invasion from Mars. The SITI Company, hailed for its “invention, precision and elegance” by The Glasgow Herald, uses the inherent drama of the most notorious radio broadcast in history not only as a means of entertainment, but also as a way to explore the genius of Orson Welles and the creation of mass media manipulation.

Sixty-one years ago nearly to the day, Welles and Company aired Howard Koch’s script (actually titled “The Invasion From Mars”) based on H.G. Wells’ novella. Presenting the story as if it were news, made seemingly more real by the anxious reports from Carl Philips in the field near Grover’s Mills, New Jersey, Welles gripped the nation. By the time the break came with the announcement that this broadcast was fiction, many listeners had already gone off screaming. The aftermath was so traumatic it spurred legislation banning the “news” format from radio drama for years.

Artistic Director Anne Bogart explains, “I want to portray Welles as not only a fun guy, but as a serious American artist, someone we need to stand up for. So many people think of him as this caricature of a fat guy on talk shows selling wine.” Indeed, the SITI Company play, written by Naomi Iizuka, captures the intellectual gamesmanship of improvisational radio theater, as Welles rewrites and modifies and as the actors (playing actors) squabble and demand.

Founded in 1992 by Bogart and Tadashi Suzuki, the SITI (Saratoga International Theater Institute) Company is at the forefront of promoting new playwrights. SITI pursues international collaboration and exploration, as evinced by its unique training regimen, a blend of the Suzuki Method, which restores the wholeness of the body to theatrical contexts, and The Viewpoints, an improvisational technique developed from post-modern dance.

Artistic director and founder Anne Bogart heads the graduate directing program at Columbia University. An Obie Award winner, she also has co-founded New York’s Via Theatre. In the journal American Theatre she claimed, “I try to set up contradictions on the stage. In between those contradictions lives something very bright. I try to think of the audience as detectives; I’m leaving them clues. The older I get, the more I try to do the least I possibly can onstage, so that the most happens in the audience’s head.”

SITI Company will hold a Meet-the-Artists discussion immediately after the performance. The troupe believes such audience interaction is an essential part of the theatrical experience.

In Arts & Lectures’ on-going effort to make our events accessible to all who wish to enjoy them, War of the Worlds—The Radio Play will be a signed performance. This evening is the first of several nights during the 2001-2002 season for which we will provide a sign language interpreter. Other such performances are The Acting Company on March 5 and one performance of The Vagina Monologues in April. Sign interpretation is made possible by the California Arts Council in collaboration with the National Arts and Disability Center.

The SITI Company is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and is sponsored by KEYT Radio and the Old Yacht Club Inn.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.

©2001 UCSB Arts & Lectures, University of California, Santa Barbara