University of Georgia to Broadcast Updated "War of the Worlds"

A meteorite, or something like one, has slammed into the ground near Georgia's Fort Yargo State Park.

A public radio station in the nearby college town of Athens interrupts a variety show to report the freak event and announce that a reporter is on his way to the scene.

Then, all hell breaks loose. A creature climbs from the crater, sparking fears of a bizarre terrorist attack or renewed hostility from Russia. Then the truth becomes clear: Thousands of similar scenes are unfolding around the world, spawned by an attack from "out there."

That story will air Saturday on a live Georgia radio and Internet broadcast, as University of Georgia theater students slam lead pipes into watermelons, scrape hairbrushes across cookie sheets and otherwise provide the sound effects for a modern version of Orson Welles' famous 1938 broadcast of "The War of the Worlds."

The troupe will perform the radio play on stage before a live audience at the Classic Center, a few blocks from the university's campus. At the same time, the show will be broadcast on WUGA-FM, the local Georgia Public Broadcasting affiliate, and on the Internet - giving the live audience and broadcast audience two unique ways to enjoy the show.

"We get to see the knife going into a watermelon," said Amy Roeder, an acting graduate student who voices four characters in the show. "They get to hear an alien leg skewering a body."

The refurbished script is the work of UGA theater and film professor John Kundert-Gibbs.

He originally signed on to direct a radio production of Welles' original script. But Kundert-Gibbs discovered the original broadcast was only 45 minutes long and full of dated material he felt wouldn't play well with the audiences of today.

"We needed to have a version of this that speaks to a modern audience," said Kundert-Gibbs, who began rewriting and extending the original script in May. "To give people that sort of 'what-if' feeling, it needed to have this contemporary feel to it."

During a recent rehearsal, actors scrambled from microphone to microphone, sometimes providing the voices of more than one character in the same scene. To represent callers being interviewed on a radio broadcast, actors stuck their mouths inside cracker boxes and spoke into standup mics.

Sound effects technicians - onstage alongside the actors - slammed brooms into pillows for fight scene noises and dragged a school desk across the stage to represent tanks and military trucks rumbling into position.

"It works remarkably well, but it looks ridiculous," Kundert-Gibbs said.

The radio play was adapted from science fiction writer H.G. Wells' 1898 novel. Over the years, there have been multiple versions - from a 1988 PBS broadcast on the 50th anniversary of Welles' Mercury Theatre production to a special effects-laden 2005 movie starring Tom Cruise.

The original radio broadcast famously sparked panic across the U.S., as listeners who missed a warning that the program was fiction mistook it for actual news. The Atlanta Constitution reported "consternation, stark fear, indignation, the gamut of emotions" from citizens who jammed the paper's switchboard trying to verify the report.

The paper said an Atlanta woman ran onto her lawn and organized neighbors in a prayer vigil, and a man in Macon, Ga., "tore loose surgical stitches when he jumped from the bed."

Kundert-Gibbs and his cast say they doubt a contemporary audience could be similarly fooled. For one thing, Federal Communications Commission rules will now require them to announce every 15 minutes that the production is not a real newscast.

And they say that with television, the Internet, e-mail and text messaging having joined radio as major sources of news, it would be hard for people to pin too much faith on a single radio broadcast.

"Back then, everybody sat around listening to the radio every night," said Brandon Wentz, another graduate student who acts in the show. "Now, anyone who's listening to the program is probably tuned in specifically to hear it."

Still, they say, under the right circumstances the broadcast could be jarring to some listeners.

Just as the 1898 novel addressed England's fading role as a superpower and the 1938 broadcast played on uneasiness as Adolf Hitler revved up Germany for World War II, Kundert-Gibbs' script evokes fears of a terrorist strike - complete with an Office of Homeland Security official suggesting "elements wishing to destabilize our country and the forces of democracy" could be to blame.

"I think the skepticism level would have been much higher pre-Sept. 11," Roeder said. "But we're so fearful as a nation, I think we're willing to believe anything bad could happen."

Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 101207