Tickets are currently on sale at Western Carolina University for a December re-creation of a 1938 Campbell’s Playhouse radio adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” that starred the legendary Orson Welles.
The WCU production will use Welles’ personal script and will star Arthur Anderson, who will reprise his role of the Ghost of Christmas Past that he performed in the original radio show more than 70 years ago. Now 87, Anderson was 16 at the time he portrayed one of Charles Dickens’ ghostly trio opposite Welles in the 1938 broadcast.
The academic-based entertainment event is being mounted by director Steve Carlisle, a stage and screen veteran who is associate dean of WCU’s Honors College; musical director Bruce Frazier, the Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Professor of Electronic and Commercial Music; and producer Donald Connelly, head of WCU’s department of communication.
The team previously collaborated on the 2008 live radio show production of Welles’ “The War of the Worlds” and last year’s nationally acclaimed Veterans Day tribute “On the Home Front, Nov. ‘44,” which won two top honors in the Broadcast Education Association’s Festival of Media Arts.
“A Christmas Carol,” which will include a live orchestra and sound effects, will feature the talents of WCU faculty, staff and students, as well as radio professionals from Western North Carolina.
Presented with special permission of the show’s original sponsor, the Campbell Soup Co., the performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 9, in WCU’s Fine and Performing Arts Center. All tickets are $10 each.
The show is a joint production of the Department of Communication, Department of English, School of Music, School of Stage and Screen, and Honors College.
For ticket information, contact the FAPAC box office at 828-227-2479 or go online to www.wcu.edu/fapac.