Halloween draws nigh, and with it, another round of ghostly tales of dark deeds laced with a little arsenic on the side, brought to you courtesy of the storytellers at Seanchai Library SL.
The full list of activities are as follows. All times SLT, and the in-world location, unless otherwise stated, will be at Seanchai Library’s SL home region of Imagination Island.
Sunday October 14th:
14:00 – Tea Time at Baker Street: join Caledonia Skytower as she tells the strange story of The Copper Beeches. The Great Detective’s assistance is called upon when, after accepting a post as Governess with a quite considerable salary (£100 per annum!), Violet Hunter, finds her conditions of employment by Jephro Rucastle, subject to unusual conditions… This marks the end of this year’s Tea Time at Baker Street readings.
18:00 – Ghosthunters & The Incredibly Revolting Ghost: Caledonia Skytower brings this tale of ghostly happenings to Magicland.
Monday October 15th:
19:00 – A Night in the Lonesome October: Seanchai Library’s adaptation of Roger Zelazy’s satirical novel continues, featuring the voice artistry of Shandon Loring, Gyro Muggins, Caledonia Skytower and special guests. Once more, Snuff the dog and other animal familiars observe the goings-on of their masters and mistresses, all Players in the Game, as some seek to use occult powers to open the doors between this world and the realm of the Great Old Ones and bring about the destruction or enslavement of the human race, while others seek to hold the doors closed. Through the eyes of the familiars we see alliances formed, betrayals played out as the game moves inexorably towards the night of October 31st, and the time when the fate of the world will be decided for another few decades (part 3 of 4).
Which Witch
Tuesday October 16th:
19:00 – Arsenic and Old Lace: Joseph Kesselring’s black comedy and most successful focuses on drama critic Mortimer Brewster, as he debates whether to go through with his recent promise to marry the woman he loves while dealing with his crazy, homicidal family and local police
Wednesday October 17th:
19:00 – Which Witch? with Faerie Maven. The final installment of Eva Ibbotson’s delightful adventure of wizards, witches, spells, conjures, and the profound need to prove one’s self in the eyes of others.
Thursday October 18th:
19:00 – Nocturnes from Ireland: Dark, daring, utterly haunting tales of lost lovers, predatory demons, and vengeful ghosts from the pen of John Connolly, as told by Shandon Loring.
The second week of October see more tales of mystery, suspense and dark happenings unfold through the vocal skills of the Seanchai Library SL, including the second part of A Night in the Lonesome October.
The full list of activities are as follows. All times SLT, and the in-world location, unless otherwise stated, will be at Seanchai Library’s SL home region of Imagination Island.
Sunday October 7th:
10:00 – Spooky Tales at Fruit Islands: Derry McMahon and Bear Silvershade read Washington Irving’s The Spectre Bridegroom and Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, along with other spooky tales and more spooky tales, all at Haunted Fruit Islands
14:00 – Tea Time at Baker Street: join Caledonia Skytower as she tells The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, in which the Great Detective is enlisted to unravel what has happened to three beryls missing form an valuable coronet, and why the son of a banker who has received the coronet as collateral against a loan, was apparently trying to bend or break the coronet…
A Night In The Lonesome October continues on Monday 8th October at Seanchai Library SL
Monday October 8th:
19:00 – A Night in the Lonesome October: Seanchai Library’s adaptation of Roger Zelazy’s satirical novel continues, featuring the voice artistry of Shandon Loring, Gyro Muggins, Caledonia Skytower and special guests.
Tuesday October 9th:
19:00 – Things That Go Bump in the Night: ghostly goings-on as told by Bear Silvershade
Wednesday October 10th:
19:00 – Which Witch? with Faerie Maven
Thursday October 11:
19:00 – Nocturnes from Ireland: Dark, daring, utterly haunting tales of lost lovers, predatory demons, and vengeful ghosts from the pen of John Connolly, as told by Shandon Loring, featuring Mr. Pettinger’s Demon and The Inn at Shillingford.
Friday October 12th:
18:45 – The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Derry McMahon and Bear Silvershade read Washington Irving’s classic tale at the Breedables Fright Night (see the Seanchai Library SL’s website for details of the location, once confirmed)
Sunday October 14th:
18:00 – Ghosthunters & The Incredibly Revolting Ghost: Caledonia Skytower brings this tale of ghostly happenings to Magicland.
It is the start of the Haunted Month, and Seanchai Library (SL) are marking the arrival and passage of October ith a four-part reading of Roger Zelazy’s A Night in the Lonesome October. The latter is the last of Zelazy’s published works, and 31 of its 32 chapters (the first being an introductory chapter) each take place on a night in October.
A Night In The Lonesome October
The book is satirical in nature, and is written in the first person – the narrator being Snuff the dog, the companion of none other than Jack the Ripper. The central theme of the book is that once every few decades, when the moon is full on the night of Halloween, the fabric of reality thins, and doors may be opened between this world and the realm of the Great Old Ones. At this time, men and women with occult knowledge gather at a certain location to engage in The Game – an attempt by some to open the doors, and others to hold them closed. Should the Openers ever win the game, the Great Old Ones will come to Earth, remake it in their own images and enslave or slaughtering the human race in the process.
Through the month of October, the Players in the game – all archetypal characters from Victorian Era gothic fiction – form alliances, make deals, oppose one another, and even kill off opposing Players, until the night of October 31st, when the ritual takes place and the fate of the world is decided. Each Player has his or her familiar, an animal companion with near-human intelligence which helps them complete the numerous preparations required to be ready for the ritual on the final night. The majority of the story describes the interactions and discussions of these animals, as described from Snuff’s viewpoint.
Seanchai Library will be presenting A Night in the Lonesome Octoberin four parts, featuring members Shandon Loring, Gyro Muggins, Caledonia Skytower and special guests. Part One will be presented on Monday October 1st, at 19:00 SLT.
Also this week, Seanchai Library (SL) will be presenting:
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow with Derry McMahon and Bear Silvershade – Tuesday October 2nd, 19:00
Petty Magic with Caledonia Skytower – Wednesday October 3rd, 19:00
Nocturnes from Ireland with Shandon Loring- Thursday October 4th, 19:00
Tea Time on Baker Street with Caledonia Skytower – Sunday October 7th, 14:00
All the events will be held on Seanchai Library’s home region at Imagination Island, and all are welcome to attend.
This weekend, Saturday May 19th and Sunday May 20th, the Seanchai Library will host a Welcome to Summer Weekend featuring a variety of summer-themed events to benefit their home at the Community Virtual Library (CVL) Estate (SLurl).
In addition to the events, the scenic parcel on Imagination Island will be fitted out with picnics, blankets and other trappings of summer. Chief among these features will be “The Narrows” – a surf wave running along the North border of the sim from the creations of noted Second Life surf creators Heather Goodlife and Sebastian Saramango. “The Narrows” features perilous off-sim rocks, a shark, a kraken, and free surfboards so everyone can “catch the wave.” Residents are encouraged to enjoy the summer features of the sim all weekend long. Imagination Island is a Mature rated sim.
Events
All times SLT
Saturday 19th May:
13:00 – Summer Stories read by the Seanchai Staff
14:00 – Lightning Productions present their Tribute to the Beach Boys concert
15:00 – More tales of sun, sand and surf
Sunday 20th May:
16:00 – Summer Stories
17:00 – Beach Party hosted by DJ Derry McMahon
All events are free, with all donations received to benefit the Community Virtual Library.
War of the Worlds is a novel I’ve always enjoyed for both its allegorical nature and for being a chilling tale first encountered at school. I also very much enjoy Jeff Wayne’s musical version (thanks to both Dad & my own discovery of Wayne’s brilliant Spartacus back in the 1990s). I’m also more that a little familiar with the tale of Welles’ 1938 Mercury Theatre Hour broadcast – but then, who isn’t?
Given all this, attending a special presentation of War of the Worlds in Second Life by the Seanchai Library is something I’ve been looking forward to ever since Bear Silvershade passed me details of the production, together with an invitation to attend.
I did actually try to make the opening night, on Saturday 22nd, but issues with Voice and Media put paid to that for me, with the result that I felt most frustrated. Sunday’s performance proved to be a lot better – although it did prompt a hasty re-install of a Viewer to allow me to hear things clearly. So it was that I settled down into a beanbag in a packed audience at Haunted Fruit Islands to await the unfolding of events at Grover’s Mill.
Bear Silvershade as the ill-fated Carl Phillips, and who invited me to the performances
Yes, Grover’s Mill, New York, not Horsell Common, Surrey. Given this is a Halloween presentation, this is not just any adaptation of War of the Worlds, it is a presentation of the original script use by Welles and his company in 1938. What’s more, it is being staged with the full approval of the estate of the late Howard Koch, who wrote the script for the infamous 1938 broadcast.
So it is that the story is relocated from rural England and bustling London’s at the end of the 19th Century to rural New Jersey and the towering metropolis of New York. Thus, we open with a scene-changing voice-over that condenses Wells’ original prose and aids with the change in setting from the late 1890s to the latter years of the Depression in the United States.
Of course, Second Life is a visual medium – so how do people go about trying to recreate an audio broadcast? Acting the piece is clearly impossible, not with all that goes on; but having a group of actors standing listlessly on stage isn’t the answer either.
Seanchai Library deal with the issue very cleverly, using a simple but effective set. This has the members of the cast standing in the windows of what appears to be the ruins of a building somewhere – perhaps the remnants of a New York high-rise, so hauntingly described as being cut down as if by the hand of a giant in the broadcast. Kaydon O’Connell – who takes over the central role of Professor Richard Pierson from Orson Welles – takes up the centre of the set, standing in the “doorway” of the building.
The stage: simple and effective
It’s an exceptionally good arrangement; the cast are posed without the risk of AOs distracting the audience, helping to focus attention on what is being said. It also allows those in the cast who have several roles within the piece (i.e. everyone but Kaydon O’Connell as the lead), free to adapt to their various roles quickly and smoothly.
Kaydon O’Connell
As Professor Richard Pierson, Kaydon O’Connell has a considerable pair of shoes to fill. While only 22 when he produced War of the Worlds, Orson Welles was already a director and producer of renown. In 1934 he had directed what became known as Voodoo Macbeth in rapturous reviews that lead to it touring the United States. By the time he co-founded the Mercury Theatre Company, he’d built a considerable reputation as an actor in a number of CBS productions, perhaps the most notable of which was Hamlet, in which he took the lead role as well as serving as Director.
In War of the Worlds, Welles’ authoritative tones do much to establish the character and credibility of both the play and of Professor Pierson, and his closing monologue is particularly chilling. Taking on the role, Kaydon O’Connell brings the same authority and, as we reach the end of the tale, achieves the same mix of confusion, despair and bewilderment Welles evidenced in his portrayal. In this he is an ideal choice for the role; his tone is natural, the emotions behind his words clear – and he carries the core of the play superbly.
The young Orson Welles, circa 1937/8
Alongside the main stage set, there were some additional visual effects planned for the production. Unfortunately, this being a Sunday night, the players had to deal with something Wells nor Welles could never have conceived: an attack of SL Weekend Gremlins. These put a stop to some of the effects, and caused a short pause in the proceedings – although they failed to dampen the audience’s enthusiasm!
The visuals we did see were a treat – as I said at the start of this review, I’ve always enjoyed Jeff Wayne’s musical interpretation of War of the Worlds, and so was delighted when, in a very nice nod to that work, a familiar Martian Fighting Machine appeared above the audience, heat ray extended, and which then spewed forth a black, cloying “smoke” in time to the unfolding events of the play.
“The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million-to-one, he said”
Some of the readings are at times a little rushed or stilted – hardly surprising, given the cast here don’t have the luxury of being in the same studio with one another and so lack the benefit of having visual or directorial cues to follow. But that said, the cast as a whole handle the material exceptionally well.
Indeed, it’s fair to say it is a brave group that takes on a piece as infamous as Welles’ War of the Worlds, but the Seanchai Library and friends do so with verve, gusto and success. Given we all know the book and the story of the original radio broadcast, attempting to recreate the atmosphere the audience of 73 years ago must have felt is nigh-on impossible. However, the cast are to be congratulated in the way that, despite our foreknowledge, they nevertheless provide us with a window into the past through which we can gain a sense of what it must have been like on that dark night of October 30th 1938, as people huddled around their one link to the world at large only to hear what seemed to be news of a fearsome invasion unfolding as they listened.
Of course, Welles’ intention was never to panic anyone – and today there is still much debate as to whether the original show actually caused the degree of panic claimed to be the case during the broadcast, or whether it was in fact the press reports in the days after the broadcast that created the major frenzy. Welles’ intention was simply to entertain people on a chilly Halloween evening – a point he later discussed with H.G. Wells himself in a 1940 radio broadcast.
So, if you do enjoy a good tale for Halloween, you might like to pop along for the final presentation of The War of the Worlds, which takes place at 19:00 SLT this Wednesday, the 26th October, at Seanchai Library. All things being equal, I’ll see you there, as I hope to be back as well to soak up even more!
In the meantime, courtesy of the Vancouver Film School, and to whet your appetite, here’s a short film of how Welles might have been inspired to adapt Wells’ novel, had the two men met before the events of October 30th, 1938.
“We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s, and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
“With infinite complacency people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small, spinning fragment of solar driftwood which, by chance or design, man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space.
“Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
“In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. It was near the end of October. Business was better. The war scare was over. More men were back at work. Sales were picking up. On this particular evening, October 30th, the Crosley service estimated that thirty-two million people were listening in on radios.”
So opens one of the most famous radio broadcasts of the last century, Orson Welles’ famous interpretation of H.G. Wells’ allegorical classic War of the Worlds.
Welles during his October 30th 1938 broadcast
Set in 1939, but actually broadcast on October 30th 1938, the adaptation was part of Welles’ own weekly (and largely dramatic) Mercury Theatre on Air presentations for CBS Radio.
So real did the show seem, that many who tuned-in after it had commenced broadcasting – so missing the opening announcements – took it for genuine reports of an unimaginable invasion, rather than the usual fictional offering from Welles.
It has been claimed that Welles structured his adaptation specifically so that the first “news broadcast” from Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, would occur some 12 minutes into the broadcast, knowing full well that it was around that time that those listening to NBC Radio’s The Chase and Sandborn Hour would frequently re-tune their radios to listen to The Mercury Theatre on CBS, and this added to the confusion the show created among listeners.
While history suggests that the show may not have caused quite the panic that newspapers at the time suggested (at least during the actual broadcast), that it did have an impact both while on-air and in the days that followed cannot be denied. Certainly, it became something that was – a notable event in history, one that is still known to many the world over even now, some 73 years after the original broadcast.
The New York Times reporting on Welles’ broadcast the following day
And it is this history that is about to come to life in Second Life this month.
To mark Halloween this year, the Seanchai Library will give three performances of War of the Worlds in Second Life. What is more, thanks to the gracious permission of the family of playwright Howard Koch, the performances will be and adaptation of the 1938 screenplay Koch and writing partner Anne Froelich produced for Welles’ broadcast.
The production is being directed by Seanchai’s own Caledonia Skytower, and will feature the voice talents of Shandon Loring, Bear Silvershade and Kayden O’Connell, Crap Mariner, Elder Priestman, BigRed Coyote and Caledonia Skytower herself among the cast.
Commenting on the production, Caledonia said, “I remember hearing the L.A. Theatreworks production of this script in the 1990s and imagining what it must have been like to have been listening that October evening in 1938. Orson Welles and company presented it in keeping with the spirit of the Halloween season.”
“War of the Worlds scared the pants off people back in the ’30s, using the power of voice to persuade folks this was real,” Derry McMahon, Seanchai’s chief librarian, added enthusiastically, “We plan to generate that same feeling with our production.”
This is definitely not something to be missed. War of the Worlds – be it the novel, the radio broadcasts (and its many later adaptations) or Jeff Wayne’s glorious musical version (also recently revived on stage) – is a fabulous tale with an allegorical heart that may still hold as true today as it did in Wells’ own time. The Seanchai production promises to continue the tradition set by its predecessors and, in the process, help to raise money for charity. Given this is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it is fitting that the nominated charity is the Susan G. Komen Foundation.
The production is being directed by Seanchai’s own Caledonia Skytower, and will feature the voice talents of Shandon Loring, Bear Silvershade and Kayden O’Connell, Crap Mariner, Elder Priestman, BigRed Coyote and Caledonia Skytower herself among the cast.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 