In a unique class that combined history and theatre, a 79-year-old radio broadcast became surprisingly relevant to 12 University of Pennsylvania students.

Orson Welles was just about the age of the students when his Mercury Theater company adapted the H.G. Wells 19th-century science fiction novel War of the Worlds about a Martian invasion of earth in a live radio broadcast. Some listeners thought it was real and panicked.

While studying the 1930s, the Penn class created their own adaptation of the first 40 minutes of Welles’ broadcast with the students cast as writers, actors and sound technicians. They recorded in several locations on campus, including the Kelly Writers House Wexler Studio and outdoor garden and even on the top floor of a garage. 

The broadcast recorded by the students is available through Penn Libraries ScholarlyCommons.

All the while the students discussed parallels to how news is broadcast and consumed on new media, then and now, with references to fears of authoritarian control and politics in an era of new media, raising similar questions today as it did for listeners in 1938.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​“The project did open up these questions. Who do we trust? And is what we are hearing on the radio actually true?” says senior Grant Kleiser, a history and international relations major from New York City. “Is it the government’s job to stop these programs? And how does that relate to free speech and censorship? These debates are timeless and are very relevant today.”

Motivated by Penn’s “Year of Media,” this unique class was the first collaboration between Bruce Lenthall, the executive director of Penn’s Center for Teaching and Learning and an adjunct associate professor of history, and Rosemary Malague, a senior lecturer and director of Penn’s Theatre Arts Program. 

“My thinking was, How do you get students to see this as alive and relevant rather than dusty and distant?” Lenthall says. “The project is the wedding of history and theater. Some of relevance is historical, and some is performative: how to tell a story with sound, and this question of how do we make sense of the world around us and what do we trust.”

The course description and conception changed with the presidential election.

“Suddenly fake news was news,” says Malague.

The idea of what and who to believe in many different information channels became central to the course.

“The question of fake news and Twitter as a political force and a different kind of media jumped into the forefront,” Lenthall says. “The way we thought of the course changed.”

The first part of the course focused on the history and politics of the era, led by Lenthall. They listened to and discussed in depth the original 1938 broadcast and discussed radio and its impact during those years. They compared the fictional War of the Worlds with the real crash of the Hindenburg. They watched movies from the period as well, including “Citizen Kane” starring Welles.

The students then decided how they would adapt the original radio broadcast, written by Howard E. Koch and directed by Welles, and worked in teams to create the recording, guided by Malague. Running 38 minutes, the production was played during the last class of the year, and the students commented on the experience.

“Of all the classes I have taken here at Penn, this has been one of my favorites,”  says Sam Wert, a junior from Oklahoma City majoring in classical studies and linguistics and one of the students who worked on sound.

​​​​​​​The adaptation follows the structure and tone of the Welles original, but with changes to some important elements. The Martians invade Philadelphia instead of New York City. The musical selections are recordings of performances by several Penn groups, including the Penn Chamber, Wind and Arab Music ensembles.

Also, women are cast in many of the roles, which were played by men in the original, and the gender pronouns are different throughout as a result.

Jonnell Burke, a junior from New York City, played the role of Professor Pierson, a Princeton University astrophysicist portrayed by Welles in the original.

“We wanted a timeless feel, from then and today,” says Burke, a neuroscience major. “What we wanted was to consider the audience, what they would hear and feel and think about after listening to it. What we do preserve is that you get a sense of foreign threat and foreboding.”

One of the most challenging scenes to create was set outside at a New Jersey farm, with Kleiser interviewing the characters played by Burke and Wert. The students recorded in the Kelly Writers House garden, with staff webmaster Zach Carduner managing the sound.

“We recorded that whole stretch live with the class making the sounds of the crowd. We did a lot of that on the spot, creating crowd reaction,” Malague says. “That is an interesting and complicated scene that most recreates the 1930s live experience.”

They sourced other sound effects from the Internet, and created some of their own. Penn's School of Arts & Sciences computing team, including Nicolo Marziani, helped put it all together.

“The process of making the radio program itself was eye opening, how much work goes into making a one-hour project, in radio in particular, all the different pieces that have to come together,” says Kleiser, who played the part of the main reporter, Carl Phillips.

“It is still Welles’ project, but it could be believable today,” Lenthall says.