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Students take on "War of the Worlds"

BY KRISTINE CANNON

Progress Staff Writer

Students at Scottsdale Community College’s Scottsdale School of Film+Theatre are premiering one of their most ambitious collaborations to date: a multimedia-streamed performance piece based on Orson Welles’ 1938 radio broadcast, “War of the Worlds.”

“It has been one of the more successful hands-on learning processes I’ve ever been in,” said Don K. Williams, head of performance and directing.

SCC takes a unique approach to “War of the Worlds,” originally a radio broadcast that fooled listeners into thinking Martians were invading. Through podcasts, �ilm, streaming, live theatre and radio, the students combined both �ilm and theater while working remotely.

The production takes place at 7 p.m. May 20 and 21.

According to Williams, their intention with the production is to “respect the meta-angle that Orson Welles was going for.”

“Our attempt was to make it as close to reality as possible, if this were really happening,” Williams said.

Williams added that fans of the original will appreciate the fact that students followed the script verbatim.

“We haven’t changed anything. We only updated a few things, but not much at all,” he said. “What we tried to do is capture what would happen – what our reaction and our response be.”

The question Williams asked the nearly 20 students who worked on the production was: “When faced with your own mortality, what do you do?”

“And I think it’s a very timely question – and a real key to the story,” Williams said. “It has a very strong parallel in our lives today.”

Freshman and theater major Ashley Thomson, 18, plays Carla Phillips, a reporter who witnesses the Martians’ �irst steps on earth.

“From an acting perspective, this character needs a clear objective as to why she would voluntarily face a nightmare. Finding this objective required a lot of table work and collaboration with the director, Don Williams,” Thomson explained. “With this connection, it became easier to put myself in her troubling situation and feel both her fear and her determination,” Thomson said. For theater major Kristen Meiners, 21, the biggest challenge of “War of the Worlds” was co-designing the several sets with vastly different locations, styles and personalities.

Meiners, who is also co-designer for all props, said, “We really focused on all the details within the script and built the world around the idea of how comic book superheroes would look corporatized.”

Meiners’ favorite task was leading the design of the news set.

“It’s very different from my normal style in terms of design,” Meiners explained. “I really love utilizing fun set dressings in my designs wherever I can, and I tend to lean more towards older architecture as well for inspiration. The news set is very minimalistic and modern in contrast. It was fun to design something I normally wouldn’t gravitate towards.”

Williams said one of the biggest challenges for both himself and students was accepting the limitations of COVID-19.

“That was a real challenge: How can we be creative and inside and work inside the restrictions?” he said.

But they met the challenge head-on, in turn combining �ilm and theater in a “really harmonious, symbiotic way,” Williams said.

“During times of economic crises, societal adversity and now a global pandemic, theatre continues to �ind a way to reinvent itself and stay relevant,” he said.

Meiners said that she learned many aspects of the �ilmmaking process that she wouldn’t have otherwise as a theater major. “And I hope the �ilm students we have collaborated with have learned some theater knowledge as well,” she said.

With varying sets, locations, and storytelling methods, the students took the concepts of the radio show and transported it to the 21st century.

“They didn’t give up,” Williams said. “They were able to create something beyond just ‘good enough.’

“We’ll all look back on this time, especially these students, and say, ‘I remember when we pushed through,’ and it’ll be a really great thing for them to lean on the rest of their lives.”

“War of the Worlds” is streamed by Broadway on Demand.

Viewers will need to create a Broadway on Demand account and pay a processing fee before watching.

Scottsdale School of Film+Theatre students Naidelyn Orozco, Griffi n Leander, Samantha Suarez and Tori Connors on the “War of the Worlds” set. (Andrea Small)

Scottsdale School of Film+Theatre students Ben Waddell and David Keeps on the “War of the Worlds” set. (Andrea Small)