Despite the challenges they’ve faced this year, the Theatre Program will be turning out yet another show in the form of their newest radio play, “The Twisted Tales of Poe.” Based on the works of famous American author and poet Edgar Allan Poe, the play will open on January 28th and run through the 30th, live-streamed at 7:30 each night. 

What exactly is a radio play? In this case, the decision was made to reinvent a 1940s version of Poe’s short stories in their own era’s popular genre: the radio show.  This means that each actor has the opportunity to portray radio celebrities of time, who are then given multiple roles throughout the four intertwined stories of said radio show. 

For example, famous characters of his such as the Caretaker of the “Tell-Tale Heart” (played by junior Lareina Allred) or Inspector Talbot of “The Spectacles” (played by freshman Chase Bochenek) are introduced in their proper stories and consequently appear in those to follow, making the original plots become even more twisted—hence the title of the play. “All these famous stories that you’ve already heard of, but they change them and they kind of fit them all together in this one narrative,” Allred explained . 

By presenting this type of play, each cast member was given an opportunity to try out different accents and characterization methods to vary the identity of each role they play. “With a radio play, you don’t necessarily have to look like what you sound like. And so we get to play with different characters and physicality… you may be seeing one thing… but what you hear is the actual story,” Allred enthused. In fact, the director, Doc Worth, specifically hand-picked this piece for that purpose. 

Her decision, she said, was motivated by how she loved “the idea of making a foley board work and having the actors do voice work playing multiple characters.” 

The appeal of a radio play is furthered by what Doc referred to above as the use of a “foley board”: a creative way of implementing sound effects live through the use of ordinary objects. In this play, for instance, cast members will be simultaneously tasked with certain sound effects—a bongo drum to create the illusion of heartbeat, or a pair of shoes “walked” across a hard surface to insinuate footsteps. 

The quarantine forced them to get creative in this aspect: “The largest obstacle has been finding ways to do the foley board sound effects via the computer—we had to purchase computer microphones and materials to make the sounds such as cobble stones, bricks, [and] wind machines,” Doc detailed.