The Play

The play book. dwm photo

 Saturday, November 4, residents and a few staff put on a show called The Invasion of Earth as it began in Grover's Mill, New Jersey.

 A friend and colleague, who was directing the production asked if I'd consider being in the show as Joe, a workingman who gets very upset by the "War of the Worlds" broadcast, October 30, 1938.

 It was nice to be asked but  it's been more than 40 years since I was on stage trying to act.  Senior year of high school I was part of the cast in a Shakespeare play, Comedy of Errors.  I had a lot of lines to memorize and I wasn't sure I could do that again.  "No worries," I was told, this was going to be a radio play.

 When I joined practice the first time, I realized we weren't doing a radio production.  We held our scripts while staying in character.

 The play, written by J.R. Mimbs, looks at what may have happened to four groups of listeners.

• Hoyt and Janice are a couple in their 30s preparing for a dinner where Hoyt expects to learn he is getting a promotion at work.
• John and Joyce are trying to do the right thing for their daughter, Maria, who doesn't want to listen to the program mom and dad want to hear and may not have finished all her chores.
• Morris and Sue are hosting Morris' brother, Joe, and his wife, Kerry who made the trek from Detroit to see them at the end of October.
• Finally, there is a clubhouse of young girls busy enforcing and figuring out where they stand in the pecking order of life.

We don't know where these people live but it was close to the epicenter of the invasion at Grover's Mill.  

Reports from the scene described machines rising and people dying, but when Morris and Joe went to check things out, we couldn't find anything to confirm what we heard on the radio.

Despite a lack of proof, each group took what they thought were proper precautions while rationalizing what they did.

As Joe, I was impressed by the hospitality my big brother and his wife showed Kerry and I but confused why our mom was thinking about selling the family home.  That's when we learned Morris and Sue are expecting their first born.  

My character is excitable, offering a toast for the baby announcement and ultimately paranoid about what is coming over the radio painting a horrific picture of who or what crashed to earth.

It's been a long time since any of us in the play memorized lines.  I didn't want to read from the book and felt I knew most of my lines but several false steps during rehearsal convinced me it would be a good idea to have the book handy.

Cast and crew of "Invasion of the Earth..."

As actors and friends, we looked out for each other, helping jog a memory loose with an additional line or
picking up the action further down the page.

A challenge with doing a show like this in a retirement community, as opposed to a school, was that we rarely had the full cast together for practice.  In fact, we only did the full show with everybody present twice.  The second time was our opening and closing performance.

The audience enjoyed it, based on their laughter at appropriate spots and warm rounds of applause.  

It was a joy to get better acquainted with a number of cast mates and an interesting challenge getting outside my comfort zone.  The main reason I did is that residents attending these shows are generous in showing their appreciation for the folks willing to get out on stage.

Despite all the best wishes, none of us broke a leg.