Benedictine College’s Department of Theatre and Dance is bringing the classic story of It’s Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play to the stage next month.
The show is based on the iconic 1946 Frank Capra film, but it follows a script adapted by playwright Joe Landry, which sees the story retold through the lens of an old radio broadcast.
“The show takes place on a 1940s radio station that is doing a reading of It’s a Wonderful Life. The result is a play-within-a-play type of world,” stage manager Hazel Conder said.
“The key concepts consist of contrasts between light and dark, warm and cold, sacrifice and greed, gratitude and selfishness,” she said.
The show’s director, Lindsay Kennedy, Ph. D., believes the production provides contrasting emotions.
“I was really struck by the contrast between warmth and cold in particular,” Kennedy said.
“I was also really inspired by some pictures of the great blizzard of 1978, and the way that people were able to find joy in the middle of their hardships.”
“I want my show to incorporate a lot of elements that incorporate that feeling of hope,” she said.
Rehearsals for It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play began this past Wednesday, October 16, and will run for about a month before the opening of the show, on November 21.
The story of George Bailey and his battle to understand the value of his life, is well known across homes in America. Much of the film’s original dialogue carries over to the stage play, as well as many of the original plot points.
The most significant difference between the original script and Joe Landry’s 2066 adaptation is the radio studio setting.
Noah Steenbergen, the show’s scenic designer, was given the task of deciding how to dress the stage to fit the vision laid out in the script.
“We are going to build a box set like the one we built for The Mousetrap a couple years ago,” Steenbergen said.
“It’s going to be set up like a 40s recording studio with a glowing sign that says ‘on air,’ one that says ‘laughter’ and one that says ‘applause.’”
Steenbergen said that construction on the set would begin as soon as the set for the Theatre Department’s previous show, The Glass Menagerie, is complete.
With just around a month until the show opens, It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play still has quite a bit of work to do. But Kennedy and the rest of the crew are confident that it will be a show the audience will not soon forget.