A Wonderful "Wonderful Life"

(From the Janesville Messenger, 12-21-08)

Another year, another Christmas radio play.

What started as a random idea – thanks to an infamous brainstorming session with former JPAC director Laurel Canan - is now close to becoming classified as a local tradition.

In 2007, about 300 people braved 4 inches of snow to witness Charles Dickens’ classic story “A Christmas Carol” come to life on the stage of the Janesville Performing Arts Center, and hundreds more heard it broadcast live on WCLO. This year, after another nasty winter storm forced a postponement, about 350 showed up on December 10 to watch our group – now known as “The JPAC Radio Players” – perform “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

When WCLO agreed to broadcast the play last year and this whole idea began taking shape, I had no idea how things would evolve. I viewed it as a small, fun event that wouldn’t take a lot of time. I didn’t know how wrong I would be.

Since I know a lot of people in the local acting community, I had some good ideas about who would be right for certain roles. I knew, for example, the incredibly gifted Michael Chase would make a perfect Scrooge. Once I started asking people to be a part of the show, however, word spread, and before I knew it, I was being bombarded with phone calls by people wanting to take part.

By the time Mike Casey, a veteran of the local stage and “Christmas Carol” junkie, called to ask about a role, I had filled all the speaking parts. When I offered the sole responsibility I had left - creating the sound effects - Mike dove into it. What originally seemed like a consolation job led to Mike becoming the star of the stage show. Armed with books describing how certain sounds were produced during the days of radio drama, Mike was determined to do the sound effects the right way, live and unaided by taped noises. The audience was captivated.

I was also fortunate to enlist the help of Sarah Lima, a teacher and accomplished musician, to be our accompanist. She came up with the musical ideas, making my job easy and proving once again that it pays to surround yourself with talented people.

Celebrating in the lobby after last year’s show was complete, the common question was, “What are we going to do next year?” I already had the answer. I had researched “It’s A Wonderful Life” and knew that radio scripts existed.

The original radio script I read aired in 1947 with Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed and other original actors from the popular movie version. While I liked the idea of doing that particular script, it was only 55 minutes long and greatly abridged from the movie version, which runs over 2 hours. I felt that much of our audience would be very familiar with the film and would be disappointed that certain scenes were left out. So I searched out another version and found one that was supposed to run about 90 minutes and was much more faithful to the movie.

After last year’s play, I had scores of people come to me and ask how they could be a part of the next performance. I decided that this year, I was going to need to do auditions.

I did, however, pre-cast two of the lead roles. I’ve debated whether that was the right thing to do, but as I read the script, every time I came to one of George Bailey’s lines, I could hear the voice of Dave Bitter, who had played Bob Cratchit in “Christmas Carol.” I decided to offer him the part and get it on his schedule before one of his many other acting opportunities came calling. Ditto for Michael Chase, who not only handled the villainous Mr. Potter, but ended up taking on George’s brother Harry and the Italian restauranteur Mr. Martini. In the final scene, in fact, Harry and Martini talk to each other, which had to be amusing for the audience to watch.

In a marathon evening at JPAC, Laurel Canan and I auditioned nearly 60 people for the 12 roles I had left. The decision-making process was gut-wrenching. There were a number of people that could have done a fine job but I simply couldn’t fit them in. In several cases, there were two or three people that read the same role really well, and it became a matter of how to break the tie. As it was, I ended up casting three more people than I intended.

Thankfully, not all of the choices were difficult. J. Peter Shaw of Evansville had barely uttered a full sentence when I knew he was the perfect choice to play Clarence, the angel that earns his wings by helping George. I glanced over at Laurel and the look on her face confirmed that she was thinking the same thing. WCLO radio personality Rose Stricker, who wasn’t even on our radar prior to auditions, came in and turned out to be an ideal choice as George’s wife Mary.

Mike Casey and Sarah Lima returned in their respective roles, guaranteeing that sound effects and music would again be top-notch. In fact, the sound effects evolved to the point that we needed three people dedicated to performing them – including Laurel herself, who also had a one-line cameo.

Once we got deeper into rehearsals, I realized that the show was running long. I had to cut about 15 minutes out of the script to get us to my goal of 90 minutes.

Until the night of the broadcast, we never performed the complete show start to finish. We intended to have one final rehearsal where we ran it straight through but thanks to poor winter road conditions, it never happened. So we were, in fact, winging it the night of the show.

If you weren’t there in person or heard the performance live on WCLO, you still have the opportunity. The show will be rebroadcast on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day – check wclo.com for air times. A recording of the show is also posted on the WCLO web site; you can find it by typing “wclo.com/podcasts/wclo-special-broadcasts/”.

When “It’s A Wonderful Life” was chosen a year ago, no one had a clue that bank failures and mass job losses would be a reality in America 2008. While the appeal of this story is timeless, it takes on special meaning this year because of the circumstances this country currently faces.

I hope that this holiday season, whatever your situation may be, that like George Bailey we take time to reflect on the positive effect our lives have had – or can have - on others.