The Next Voice You Fear…

Just in time for Halloween, TheatreWorks’ will present a staged reading of The Next Voice You Fear… by Danbury playwright Tom Libonate. The show is an original stage adaptation of the infamous “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast of Halloween, 1938. Approximately six million people had tuned into the broadcast, and nearly two million listeners believed the terrifying news they heard to be true — that a Martian invasion of the Earth was underway. The story is not limited to the confines of CBS Studio One in New York City, where Orson Welles and his “Mercury Theatre on the Air” arguably perpetrated the greatest mass-hoax in American history. The play goes far beyond — to paint a portrait of a nation — from San Francisco to Providence, Rhode Island — gripped with panic in the face of this horrifying tale told through the bold new medium of the age — radio.

The Next Voice You Fear… builds on the original, chilling “War of the Worlds” radio script, penned by the late Howard Koch and brought to bear by Orson Welles in his original broadcast. The broadcast is also an adaptation of the 1898 novel by British author H.G. Wells. A novel which many believe to be the first “serious” science-fiction tale ever put to paper.