Timely and timeless

Radio theater from Mad Horse

By Katherine Joyce

A More Perfect Union: Radio Plays on the Meaning of America” shows at the C.W. White Gallery through Dec. 2. Call (207) 871-7282 to reserve free tickets.

VOICE FROM THE PAST: Christine Louise Marshall, seen here in What the Butler Saw, contributes to the radio theater.

Do any of you remember the days when radio was the primary source of family entertainment? I don’t. But I’ve heard that there was such a time, and that families sat around the radio for news, stories, soap operas, and plays. There were no pictures to invade the province of the imagination. Voices were sent over the airwaves, and with the help of sound effects, Americans could see a story play out in their heads. Bad news came unaccompanied by devastating footage.

The Mad Horse Theatre Company has revitalized a small element of that era here in Portland by performing two in a series of radio plays written by a group of artists called “The Free Company.”

The decision to perform these plays stemmed from the events of September 11th. On September 10th, the Mad Horse Theatre Company was planning to remount Bash and Three Viewings, two shows produced last year for audiences limited to about 20 people. Artistic Director Andrew Sokoloff felt strongly about the pieces, and wanted to afford more people an opportunity to see them.

On and after September 11th, Sokoloff felt that those two shows were the wrong thing for a grieving community in a grieving nation. So he set off in search of more appropriate pieces that the Company could put together in a short period of time. In the Portland Public Library he came across a series of 10 radio plays written by The Free Company and broadcast in the winter and spring of 1941.

The Free Company consisted of a number of famous artists who were “unpaid, unsponsored, and uncontrolled.” Among them were Maxwell Anderson, Sherwood Anderson, James Boyd, Marc Conelly, and Orson Welles. They were, as Sokoloff noted, some of the “heavy hitters” of their generation. These left-wing, liberal Democrats lived in a time when the nation was recovering from the Great Depression and was in the midst to an intense debate over whether or not to involve itself in the war in Europe. They wrote and produced these plays in response to isolationist and Nazi propaganda here in America. Sokoloff selected two of the ten plays: Above Suspicion by Sherwood Anderson and His Honor, the Mayor by Orson Welles.

These two short plays are staged as a reading, so it feels as if the audience is sitting in the radio station as the players broadcast. The sound effects (which are truly excellent) are produced in view of the audience. This format is a welcome respite from the intense footage we have been watching for the past two months. The words, however, are a powerful tribute to our Bill of Rights, the constitutional amendments that help to ensure our freedom.

Above Suspicion deals with police persecution in Germany. An American family welcomes a German cousin into their home, and an ordinary political discussion over dinner throws him into an absolute panic over what surveillance measures might reveal about the family’s “anti-State” conversation. It is a powerful commentary on the unique and special nature of American freedom. It may also be, as one player noted in the post-performance discussion, a cautionary tale. In the midst of a new era of FBI surveillance, some citizens may find their civil rights compromised in the effort to secure the nation.

His Honor, the Mayor addresses the complex nature of free speech. The rub, of course, is that the right to free speech ensures anyone, “even the worst lice,” the right to assemble and speak freely. The citizens themselves may sometimes be the most avid opponents of free speech as they attempt to protect themselves against amoral or evil points of view. Nonetheless, the American way is to allow those evils a voice, encouraging discourse and disclosure.

These timeless (and timely) plays are performed with the passion and skill this community has come to expect from the Mad Horse Theatre Company. The performers’ abilities to take on personas is not diminished by the format of the reading. Directed with tenderness and intelligence, these historical plays reach forward to a new and difficult time in our nation’s history. Through the mouths of the Mad Horse Theatre Company, these “heavy hitters” give us wisdom and insight, and engage the audience in the challenging intellectual dilemmas of human conflict.

These plays are a gift to the community from a struggling company. Although currently homeless, Sokoloff feels that this is not the time to begin a capital campaign, or even charge admission. They rehearse where they can, and scrape together the resources to pay the actors “enough money to get deeply insulted.”

In spite of their meager earnings, the Company stays on for an informal discussion after the performance. For those of us who have been staying at home with our families since September 11th, the discussion is an opportunity to come out of the cocoon and engage in an exchange with members of the community.

Although we no longer live in the age of the radio, this brief glimpse backwards is a way of acknowledging that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The subject matter is shockingly relevant over 60 years after the original broadcast. The Mad Horse players breathe life into the words of another generation, and give the audience the opportunity to imagine — a rarity in an era dominated by television and movie industries.

Katherine Joyce can be reached at ingliskat@aol.com