New podcast episode: Ray Bradbury on Stage!

It's been a while, but I'm back with a new series of Bradbury 100 podcast episodes.

I get things started with a look at Ray Bradbury as a playwright, tracing his career as a theatre writer from the 1950s to the 2010s. I cover both successes and failures, and discuss both "faithful" and "playful" adaptations of his own work.

I have touched on some of this before - see episode 12, where I talked about Colonial Radio Theatre's audio performances of Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes, which both used Ray's plays (rather than his books).

And elsewhere on Bradburymedia you will find a review of a performance of Fahrenheit 451.

Coming up in future episodes of the podcast, I'll have more in the Chronological Bradbury strand, a look at some lesser-known Bradbury films, and some Bradbury fiction.

Here's the new episode - and, of course, you can also listen via any decent podcast app (see the bottom of the page for some of the options).

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - Episode 58 - Ray Bradbury on Stage

 

 

 

 

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Bradbury 100 - new episode

Time for another all-new episode of my audio podcast Bradbury 100. This week I'm joined by filmmaker and visual effects artist Christopher Cooksey to discuss the challenges and joys of bringing Ray's work to life in the visual realm.

Christopher is the co-producer of Bill Oberst Jr's stage production Ray Bradbury - LIVE (Forever). Ostensibly a one-person show, it's really a visual feast. Bill, alone on stage (except for one dance scene), is nevertheless able to walk around Bradbury's world with the aid of visual projections and audio effects. This video, from Christopher's Youtube channel, shows some of the work that went into making the visuals for the show.

 

 

To put Bill and Christopher's work in context, in the first part of the podcast I talk about Bradbury's own use of audio-visual elements in his stage plays. You can find Ray's plays in print in a number of books. Dramatic Publishing carries nearly all of them for would-be performers and play producers, and there are some play collections aimed at general readers. The introductions and production notes in these are often as entertaining as the plays.

Find out more about Christopher Cooksey from his extensive Youtube channel and from his website.

And now, enjoy the episode:

Bradbury 100 · Bradbury 100 - episode 22 - with film-maker Christopher Cooksey

The Halloween Tree - in New York

Calling all New Yorkers! An event happening TOMORROW, based on Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree!

 
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The Living Libretto : The Halloween Tree

October 30, 2015 / 7:00 p.m.
The National Opera Center
330 7th Avenue / New York, NY 10001

From Egypt to Mexico, from prehistory to modern day, the epic journey the boys in Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree undertake in their search for their friend Pipkin manages to combine the light humor of Alice in Wonderland with the adventurous narrative of The Odyssey. Underpinned by a morality reminiscent of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the story travels across space and time, all the while offering valuable wisdom with respect to the cultural and historical traditions that have led to the contemporary celebration of Halloween. "From Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, to Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors and Wuorinen’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, phantasmagorical adventures have sprouted from regular lifestyles, transporting the audience, along with the characters, into the wild world of imagination," write the creators.

“While it sticks to two of the Aristotelian unities for drama (it has one main plot and takes place within twenty-four hours), TheHalloween Tree disposes of the third unity, one physical location, in a daring manner by traveling through space and time,” explains librettist Tony Asaro. Composer Theo Popov continues, “There are moments in Bradbury’s novel that just beg for an operatic setting: the pumpkin chorus on the Halloween Tree, the funeral processions in antiquity, the lamentations of the Druids, the flight of the witches, the communal celebrations of the Mexican Day of the Dead…Most of all, the excited pace of the narrative, which can glimpse hundreds of years of history in mere moments, makes the story ideal for a staged adventure children and parents alike would enjoy." American Lyric Theater has proudly commissioned The Halloween Tree in cooperation with the estate of Ray Bradbury.

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Tickets and more information here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-living-libretto-the-halloween-tree-tickets-18439261327?ref=ebtnebtckt

Ray Bradbury Miscellanea

Here's a playful poster from a 2000 production in Alabama. Note the tiny acknowledgment along the bottom of the poster which mentions the various artists who inspired this piece - and note also that Bradbury seems to have something of Emperor Ming about him, Alex Raymond-style.

Click the image to enlarge.

Ray Bradbury Miscellanea

Flyer from Terrance Shank's 1977 Colony Theatre production of The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury's stage play based on his own book.

(Click images to embiggen!)

Signed by Ray

Given that Ray Bradbury spent so many hours signing books, some people say that an unsigned Bradbury is worth more than a signed one. I've never been into collecting signed items, but I do have a few things signed by Ray. Here's a couple of them:

The typical Bradbury declaration "Onward!" on a paperback copy of The Cat's Pajamas. And a simple "Love!" on a postcard from one of his stage plays. It was partly because of this card that I knew the name Alan Neal Hubbs. When I met Alan a few years later, he was astonished that anyone from the UK had ever heard of him.

Somewhere, I believe I have another signed item, where Ray wrote one of his other declarations, the odd "Mad love!" - which I have always assumed was inspired by the Peter Lorre film.

 

Tributes to RB

There's a couple of free events next weekend (23 Feb 2013), one in Glendale, California, and the other in Indianapolis, Indiana:

Glendale's Mystery and Imagination bookshop, where Bradbury used to have his public birthday parties, is hosting readings by members of Bradbury's own theatre company. Here are the details:

Meanwhile in Indy, the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies' director Jon Eller will be speaking about Bradbury at the Irvington branch of the Indianapolis Public Library.

Details of the event are here.

After the rain, the sun!

Bradbury's well known story "All Summer in a Day", in which the sun only appears for a very short time (just like a typical British summer), is the inspiration for a full-length dance by the Red Bucket Dance Company. If I have read the story correctly, this group is based in Sacramento, California. More information, including dates and times of performances are in this story from Newsreview.com.

Meanwhile, in West Hollywood poets are performing Bradbury at an event which is part of the Big Read programme. Details are here.

Elsewhere (I don't know exactly where, because the web page gives absolutely no details!) somebody is rehearsing Bradbury's play Kaleidoscope, based on his short story of the same name. How do I know this? Because there are thirty-six photos here!

[Update: I have now realised that those Kaleidscope photos have captions! The first one tells us the following: Actors run a dress rehearsal of "Kaleidoscope", an adaptation of two Ray Bradbury radio plays, Wednesday night in Lafayette. The show will run April 26-29 and May 3-6 at 7 p.m. each night at Theatre 810 in downtown Lafayette. By Leslie Westbrook April 18, 2012.  I don't know where Lafayette is, but I'm guessing California.]

Miscellaneous

In the US, the NEA's "Big Read" programme continues, and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is again a popular book for communities of readers to gather around. LA-based Bradbury would probably be pleased to hear that nearby West Hollywood will play host to a number of events linked to F451. Details are here.



Illustrator Gary Gianni - whose artwork has accompanied the words of Melville, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Louis Stevenson and many others - has created illustrations for a new chapbook, The Nefertiti-Tut Express: a Story in Screenplay. The text is taken from a previously unpublished Bradbury screen treatment dating originally from the mid 1970s. Originally due to appear in 2011, I hear that the book will be out during 2012. More details on the curious history of Bradbury's text can be found on Gianni's website.



Last year, Michael O'Kelly staged Live Forever, a play about Ray Bradbury's life. Now, he has a short film which is being entered into a film festival, and which is intended to be part of a much longer DVD study of the author. More details in this story from the Ventura County Star.



If you happen to be in Denver, Colorado, in April you can see a production of Bradbury's stage play version of Fahrenheit 451. Details are here.

Chronicling Mars

Of all Ray Bradbury's stage plays, by far the most difficult to stage must be The Martian Chronicles. Bradbury wrote the play himself, from his own "novel" - but of course the "novel" is really a collection of short stories, woven together into a loose chronology.

The play, somehow, has to take the fragmentary narrative of the book and turn it into something with a unity of time, place and event. And all this without a central protagonist!

Nevertheless, the sheer variety of moods, tone and characters in The Martian Chronicles gives it a great deal of appeal, and this is no doubt why it is a popular choice for high school theatre groups to perform. Which brings me to this sympathetic review of a recent high school production in Farmington, New Mexico. The production is over now, so there's no point in my saying "break a leg"; but I hope it went well.

Keep burning those books!

Another Fahrenheit 451 stage production is receiving positive reviews. This one is in Pittsfield, Massachussets. According to J.Peter Bergman of The Advocate, this production "satisfies on just about all levels".

Who could ask for more?

Read all about it here. And read more in The Berkshire Eagle.

Treading the Boards

A recent college production of Bradbury's stage version of Fahrenheit 451 in Georgia has received a positive review. The technical aspects of this production sound interesting.

Just in time for St Patrick's Day was Pillar of Fire's production of Bradbury's Irish play Falling Upward in Alabama. Here is the delightful poster from the production. How many of the faces around the edge do you recognise?

Letter...and F451 again

The always fascinating blog Letters of Note recently posted a 1990s letter from Ray Bradbury. Bradbury was asked about an obstacle in his life that he had overcome. Read the letter - which has been put up for auction - here.



And...yet another stage production of Fahrenheit 451, this one by a school in Savannah, Georgia.

Bradbury on Stage, Audies

Terry Pace does a good job in keeping Ray Bradbury's theatre, film and TV work in the public eye. His Pillar of Fire theatre group has a Facebook page, and is also profiled in this report (and YouTube video) on the Left In Alabama website.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports on another stage production of Fahrenheit 451... with a contemporary political viewpoint.



Nominations have been published for the 2011Audie Awards - given for excellence in spoken word production by the Audio Producers of America. Among the nominees in the short story collection category is Bradbury's Long After Midnight, narrated by Michael Prichard. See the full list of nominees here.

Anthony Boucher; F451 on stage again

The blog of Indiana University's Lilly Library has a recent post on Anthony Boucher, the famed (and pseudonymous) editor and writer. In SF circles, Boucher is probably best known as founding editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. However, he had a long career as an author in several genres, and also dabbled in writing for radio and television.

The Lilly Library's connection to Boucher is its collection of his manuscripts and correspondence which includes missives exchanged with Bradbury and many others.



According to the Washington Post September 2011 will see a one-month run of a new production of Bradbury's stage play of Fahrenheit 451. This production, it claims, "takes things that Bradbury could only write about and made them 'manifest onstage with the new technology.' " I wonder whether this means parlour-wall screens for Millie, a Mechanical Hound, or some other marvel.

Fahrenheit 451 in Birmingham, Alabama

Fahrenheit 451 continues to be a popular piece of theatre. The latest production to have come to my attention is one in Birmingham, Alabama, at the Theatre Downtown. It uses Bradbury's own script, first published in 1986 by Dramatic Publishing.

The official website is here, and there is a report in a local news website here.

Update: there is a brief review of the production on Dr Robert M. Woods' blog.

Storytelling, Stage and Movies

In October, Ray Bradbury's hometown will again play host to the Ray Bradbury Storytelling Festival. I've never been to this annual event, but it sounds like fun. Full details of the current plans can be seen here.



Speaking of Festivals, summer (or what passes for summer in this cloud-shrouded UK) brings the Edinburgh Festival. Another event I've never been to...

This year, there is a Bradbury-inspired performance in Edinburgh, Steven Josephson's production of Ray Bradbury's 2116. Read the Scotsman article which quotes Bradbury here, and view the official website for the production here.

Here's Bradbury himself to explain the origin of this musical:





Finally, some audio. Here's Movies on the Radio: Ray Bradbury at the Movies, from WQXR in New York. David Garland presents soundtracks from Ray Bradbury-based movies such as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The Illustrated Man, by composers Bernard Herrmann, Stanley Myers, James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, and others.

Pandemonium, Echoes, F451

According to this article, Ray Bradbury's Pandemonium Theatre Company has stopped running. Although the company has been playing to packed houses, it sounds as if ticket sales were not enough to keep the shows going. We can only hope that this is a temporary state of affairs, as there is no doubt that having his own theatre company has enabled Bradbury to do some unique work.




Meanwhile, reviews are beginning to appear for Sam Weller's forthcoming book Listen to the Echoes. This is a collection of transcribed interviews, originally conducted when Weller was researching for his authorised biography of Bradbury. One such review is this one from the Chicago Tribune. The publisher's page for the book is here, and Weller's new blog is here. (I wonder if he knows that the 'comments' feature of the blog is broken...)




File under "how did I miss that?": Tor.com has been serializing Tim Hamilton's graphic novel version of Fahrenheit 451. Click these links to see each part:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Boris. Forry. Ray.

With a plot that sounds as unlikely as Bradbury's A Graveyard for Lunatics, Dwight Kemper's Who Framed Boris Karloff casts the legendary horror icon as a murder suspect. And, according to an interview with the author on the blog A Lone Fan Crying in the Wilderness, Karloff is not alone in being a real person cast into a work of fiction.

Apparently, Forry Ackerman is a character in the story as well.

And so is... Ray Bradbury!

Read the interview with Dwight Kemper here.



Another blogger, Justin Parpan, has risen to Steven Paul Leiva's challenge of producing artwork inspired by Bradbury stories (for Leiva's planned 90th birthday book gift to Bradbury). Justin has produced some cartoony illustrations for a number of short stories and books. I particularly like his take on "Skeleton". See Justin's artwork here.



Finally, here's a positive review of a recent Palo Alto children's theatre production of Bradbury's stage play version of Fahrenheit 451.

Another Award

Ray Bradbury must find it difficult to move for all the awards and accolades his house must be filled with. This photo shows him receiving another one, the "Pioneer Award in Mass Media" from the National Space Society. The full story is here, and a full list of previous winners and a detailed photo of the Moon-inspired trophy is here.



Found on the web: discussion of another high school production of Bradbury's stage play version of Fahrenheit 451.