On the night of October 30, 1938, Orson Welles and his “Mercury Theater On The Air” invaded the airwaves with a tale of paranoia, violence, and existential dread that captivated audiences like few other broadcasts in American media history. It told a tale from the previous century, HG Wells's “War of the Worlds,” but cleverly adapted its setting and story to fit the contemporaneous audience. It's aided by the voice work of Welles himself (2 years before he became the filmmaker of “Citizen Kane” and other classics) as well as music from Bernard Hermann (future composer of similarly classic themes for “Psycho” and “The Twilight Zone”), as well as by an audience on edge from being in an unsettling time. 84 years to the date, TouJAM presents a listening party of this audio drama. Beyond that, host DJ BO will present a brief talk about the project, and for the first time ever, present live a Chinese script adaptation and sample of a recording of the work into Mandarin Chinese. The original, of course, reportedly lead to listeners to run into the streets, paniced beyond belief. Will it still have the same effect? Find out yourself, this Sunday, Halloween eve, at INFERNO.
