Live radio broadcast of "A Christmas Carol" at Quick Center for the Arts | Press Releases

A live radio broadcast of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" will take place in Fairfield University's Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts on Friday, Dec. 8, at 8 p.m., and Saturday, Dec. 9, at 2 and 8 p.m.

The show, the first in a series of original radio broadcasts by the Quick Center, will recreate the original environment of a radio studio of the 1930s with live music and vocals, live sound effects, even "On the Air" and "Applause" signs.

Tom Zingarelli, executive director of the Quick Center, said, "the show will recreate an exciting pre-television atmosphere when the sound, the action, even the scenery were in the mind.

"Those early broadcasts were overflowing with heightened drama," Zingarelli continued, and "the Quick Center's recreation will attempt to restore that theater of the imagination with the help of talented professional and area actors, singers and musicians - all decked out in period garb. It will be a little bit of time travel, a trip to the past on the wheels of imagination."

"A Christmas Carol" will play three performances before a live audience in the Quick Center's Wien Experimental Theatre. The Friday performance will be broadcast live on WVOF, the university's radio station, and simulcast by the Yale Broadcasting Company (WYBC) at Yale University. The performance will also be video-simulcast on the university's HAM channel and its Web page.

Daniel Smith, who currently directs a weekly live radio broadcast on Yale Radio, will direct the show. The Quick Center production will faithfully reproduce the original script which starred both Orson Welles and Lionel Barrymore as Ebenezer Scrooge, and will include original commercials for Campbell soups which sponsored the program as the Campbell Playhouse in the late '30s.

Tickets to the event are $15 and may reserved by calling (203) 254-4010 or toll free at 1-877-ARTS-396. For more information, call the Quick Center at (203) 254-4242.

The following residents have been cast in the live radio broadcast of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" at Fairfield University's Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts on Friday, Dec. 8, at 8 p.m., and Saturday, Dec. 9, at 2 and 8 p.m.

Joe Mangarelli - Ansonia - Announcer 1, Nephew, and Ghost
John Watson - New Haven - Narrator, Orson Welles
Tom Zingarelli - Bridgeport - Scrooge
William Barry - Bridgeport - Ghost
Wendy Long - Fairfield - Belle, Hoousekeeper, Matha Crachit
Steven Scarpa - Shelton - Crachit, Ghost

For more information call (203) 254-4000, ext. 4242.