A press release from Lakewood Playhouse.
The LAKEWOOD PLAYHOUSE re-opens to public performances, and opens its 83rd Season with its annual foray into vintage radio drama presented live on stage. This year’s theme is Gothic Horror.
Join our actors in the 1930s/40s “radio studio” as they perform stories designed to pique the imagination, live on microphone with live sound effects. The evening’s main event will be an adaptation of the vampire horror story Carmilla, based on the 1872 novella by Sheridan Le Fanu. A second radio drama, an Inner Sanctum episode entitled The Horla, will be performed as the evening’s first act.
The Radio Gala will perform on Friday, September 10 and Saturday September 11 at 8:00pm, and on Sunday September 12 at 2:00pm, with a wine and hors d’oeuvres reception starting one hour before. Tickets are $20 each, food is complimentary, and wine will be available for purchase. Tickets are available through the link on the Lakewood Playhouse website at www.lakewoodplayhouse.org. The Radio Gala is the kick-off event of the Lakewood Playhouse’s Friends Fund, its individual giving campaign, and this year it is also the kick-off event of our re-opening to the public, after eighteen months of shutdown, for our eighty-third season.
In Carmilla, Laura and her father live a quiet life in a remote castle in the forests of Styria, Austria. Young Laura leads a solitary existence, and has no companionship except for her governess and the occasional visits of neighboring gentry. A carriage accident unexpectedly brings a girl of Laura’s age into the family’s care. Her name is Carmilla. Laura slowly falls under Carmilla’s spell. Meanwhile, young women and girls in the nearby towns have begun dying from an unknown illness, and Laura seems unable to find the energy to resist her new friend. Laura then also falls ill. Will her father and the others manage to find out the cause of her illness in time?
Inner Samctum’s The Horla is a modern adaptation based on an 1887 short story by Guy de Maupassant. Concert pianist Martin Karily seems to be in danger of being possessed, but no one will believe him.
Acting in this year’s Radio Gala are Christine Choate, Randy Clark, Joseph Grant, Aya Hashiguchi, Nicole Lockett, Steve Tarry, Andrea Weston-Smart, and Virginia Yanoff. The Radio Gala is directed by James Venturini, who also provides the show’s live sound effects. He has been responsible for producing and directing the Playhouse’s annual Radio Gala for the past thirteen years, and has been working with audio drama either on-stage or in recorded form for over forty years. The Radio Gala is produced in association with Radio Activity, a local organization devoted to audio drama.
ABOUT OUR THEATRE: The Lakewood Playhouse was founded in 1938 and is a community theatre with professional aspirations that has established itself with productions that are both intimate and epic. “Live Theatre in the Heart of Lakewood.” For further information please contact the Box Office at the Lakewood Playhouse (253) 588-0042, visit our website at www.lakewoodplayhouse.org.
