Boys’ Life: 1958 play "Mars Fantasy"

The old January 1958 issue of Boys’ Life magazine has a terrific project to help the overachieving Boy Scout in your family earn the Theater merit badge. It’s a short play titled “Mars Fantasy." The script, written by Muriel S. Bergdorf, is published in the magazine, but your scout will need a few more things before he can live out his Off-Broadway fantasy by staging and starring in a stellar production!

• Cast members: 1st Announcer, 2nd Announcer, Captain Moonlight, Prof. Wolfgang von Houndog, 1st Akela Scout, 2nd Akela Scout, The Cub, Cubby

• Stage: No scenery

• Props: Spaceship with seats for three, and panel boards with knobs and dials (kitchen gadgets); Artificial campfire; Pitcher, tray six tumblers, six straws

Good luck!

Off-Broadway: Total Recall: The Musical

Here’s a hilarious three-minute clip of Arnold Schwarzenegger performing "The Mountains of Mars" from Total Recall: The Musical, an off-Broadway production based on the 1990 film.



Music and Lyrics by Jon Kaplan and Al Kaplan.

It Came From Mars lands on stage in Michigan

The Performance Network Theatre in Ann Arbor, Michigan is staging the world premiere production of It Came From Mars, scripted by local playwright Joseph Zettelmaier, through March 21, 2010. Featuring Sandra Birch and Morgan Chard, the play is a hilarious comedy about a troupe of radio actors terrified by Orson Welles' 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast. AnnArbor.com has a review.

Fort Worth stage production of A Princess of Mars receives a lone star

Punch Shaw of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has reviewed the Hip Pocket Theatre’s stage production of A Princess of Mars (1912/1917), the “historic novel of Homeric science-fantasy” written by pulp author Edgar Rice Burroughs, and essentially given it a lone star. Here’s my favorite line from Shaw’s review:

“The whole affair is played with the grim earnestness of a Star Trek episode, where William Shatner is in his fullest over-emoting glory, while it looks like a Flash Gordon serial meets Plan 9 from Outer Space.”

Adapted for the stage by Johnny Simons with puppet design by Lake Simons, A Princess of Mars opened on October 2nd and runs through October 24th.

Pictured: Promotional artwork for Hip Pocket Theatre’s 2009 production of A Princess of Mars.

Mid-Michigan theatre to stage world premiere of It Came From Mars

According to a recent article at Playbill.com, the Williamston Theatre in Mid-Michigan will stage the world premiere of It Came From Mars, by Joseph Zettelmaier, in early 2010. Featuring Sandra Birch and Morgan Chard, here’s how the play is billed:

Halloween, 1938. Six actors are in rehearsal when they hear an alarming announcement come over the radio -- Martians have landed! Honesty and hilarity ensue when the dramatic dramatists are faced with true drama.

Fort Worth theatre to bring A Princess of Mars to life through puppetry

As part of its Thirty-third season, the Hip Pocket Theatre in Fort Worth, Texas will stage a puppet production of A Princess of Mars (1912/1917), the “historic novel of Homeric science-fantasy” written by author Edgar Rice Burroughs. Adapted for the stage by Johnny Simons with puppet design by Lake Simons, A Princess of Mars is scheduled to open on October 2nd. Here’s the promotional piece for the forthcoming production:

Suddenly projected to Mars, John Carter finds himself captive of the savage green men of Thark. With him is Dejah Thoris, lovely princess of Helium. Between them and rescue, a thousand miles of deadly enemies and unknown dangers await.

Pictured: Promotional artwork for Hip Pocket Theatre’s 2009 production of A Princess of Mars.

Drama critic picks “Mars: Population 1” as pieces of one-man Sci-Fi play land on YouTube

“Mars: Population 1,” a one-man science fiction play written, directed and performed by James Allerdyce, and which has a short run at The Players Loft in New York City until Saturday, August 29th, has received a “Critic’s Pick” review from Mitch Montgomery of Back Stage. “An interesting treatise on how our imaginative ideas about space travel affect our escapist culture,” here’s the promotional piece for the play:

Utter isolation. Limitless exploration. As he runs out of air, the first man to land on Mars comes fact to face with his own sanity, humanity, and space-madness, in this innovative sci-fi experience that will awe your imagination.

With a runtime of only 45 minutes, you can watch about 6 minutes of a performance of “Mars: Population 1” on YouTube (Part 1, Part 2).

“Mars: Population 1” is just one of many events at the 13th annual New York International Fringe Festival, which ends August 30, 2009.

One-man play in NYC explores insanity on Mars

“Mars: Population 1,” a one-man science fiction play written, directed and performed by James Allerdyce, has a short run at The Players Loft in New York City, from Saturday, August 15 through Saturday, August 29. With a runtime of only 45 minutes, “enough to take you to Mars and back,” here’s the promotional piece for the play:

Utter isolation. Limitless exploration. As he runs out of air, the
first man to land on Mars comes fact to face with his own sanity, humanity, and space-madness, in this innovative sci-fi experience that will awe your imagination.

“Mars: Population 1” is part of the 13th annual New York International Fringe Festival, which starts tomorrow.

Fort Worth theatre to stage a production of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel A Princess of Mars

As part of its 33rd season, the Hip Pocket Theatre in Fort Worth, Texas will stage a production of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic science fiction novel A Princess of Mars (1912/1917) in October 2009. Here’s a description of the upcoming production, taken from the theatre’s website:

Suddenly projected to Mars, John Carter finds himself captive of the savage green men of Thark. With him is Dejah Thoris, lovely princess of Helium. Between them and rescue, a thousand miles of deadly enemies and unknown dangers await.

Pictured above: Dejah Thoris, as depicted by comic artist Frank Cho.

NEA report: Fiction reading on the rise for adults

Fiction Reading Increases for Adults
The New York Times
January 11, 2009
By Motoko Rich

After years of bemoaning the decline of a literary culture in the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts says in a report that it now believes a quarter-century of precipitous decline in fiction reading has reversed.

The report, “Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy,” being released Monday, is based on data from “The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts” conducted by the United States Census Bureau in 2008. Among its chief findings is that for the first time since 1982, when the bureau began collecting such data, the proportion of adults 18 and older who said they had read at least one novel, short story, poem or play in the previous 12 months has risen. ...

Read the entire article in The New York Times.

Jim Henson Foundation funded puppets for a production of The Martian Chronicles

Last summer Fordham University Theatre Professor Elizabeth Margid incorporated puppetry into a stage production of The Martian Chronicles (1950), Ray Bradbury's literary masterpiece. Margid's musical adaptation featured various puppets ranging from a twelve-footer on rods to hand puppets, miniature marionettes, and shadow puppets. The materials used to make the puppets were funded by a grant from The Jim Henson Foundation.

“The Martian Chronicles is a project that I’ve had in mind for a while and decided to try my hand at actually adapting myself,” Margid said. “It was also a piece, I thought, that really lent itself to puppetry because it’s about the clash of two different civilizations -- Martian and Earthling.” In Margid’s adaptation, puppets portrayed the Martians in certain scenes and Earthlings in other scenes, depending on the point of view from which the story was being told. “Puppets are like us, but they’re more than us because they have liberation of movement and are free from gravity,” Margid said.

Puppeteer Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets, died in 1990.

Steinbeck in Alfred Coppel's "Mars Is Ours" (1954)

Here’s a foreboding passage from "Mars Is Ours," a short story by Alfred Coppel (1954) which cleverly uses John Steinbeck’s novel The Moon Is Down (1943) as a powerful device in a dark plot about an American-Russian military confrontation on the Red Planet. Originally conceived as a play, Steinbeck's novel was later adapted into a play.

He thought of the play he had been reading last night. One of the proscribed authors, but it didn’t seem to matter much up here. Graylist, Blacklist. The Loyalty Boards. They all seemed far-off and unreal across the gulf of night. But the play had troubled him. Steinbeck, or some such name. And the title so apt as the line of Weasels crawled their way across the Martian plain through the star-shot darkness. The Moon is Down. About invaders in a war that was forgotten now in a place he’d never heard of. Yet there was a frightening phrase in the play. One that brought on the nightmare again in spite of the luminol. Perhaps it had been wise to keep such a book out of the hands of civilians.

He shook his head wearily. It showed the way discipline was breaking down in the Task Group when an officer could lend a Graylist book to his commander without a twinge of conscience or fear. But my God, he wondered, what else can be expected after ten months on this desert looking for a Cominform Base that might not even exist. He told himself that he must remember to thank Hallerock for lending him the book.

Pictured above: The October 1954 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, in which Coppel’s "Mars Is Ours" first appeared. More recently, the story was published in Fourth Planet from the Sun: Tales of Mars from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, an anthology edited by Gordon Van Gelder (2005).

At the Box Office: Red Planet Mars as a Play in Three Acts

Thanks to the blog SF Signal, we learned about Sci-Fi ‘50s, a website devoted to science fiction films of the 1950s. With an opening screen of box office posters and plenty of humor, Sci-Fi ‘50s provides summaries, cast analysis, commentary, trivia, photos, quotes from reviews, and ratings of twenty-one different films, including several that pertain to Mars.

One film, Red Planet Mars (1952), is deemed a "Fake sci-fi film used to flog fanatic anti-commie religious fakery." Set in California starring a young Peter Graves with the screenplay by John L. Balderston and Anthony Veiller, the Sci-Fi '50s "Wow Meter" rates the film “a dismal -4.”

Interestingly, the screenplay for Red Planet Mars was based upon Red Planet, an equally dismal play in three acts, written by Mr. Balderston and John E. Hoare. According to The New York Times, the play, a
"political melodrama" set in London starring Bramwell Fletcher and Valerie Taylor, delayed its Broadway debut at the Cort Theatre in December 1932 because well-known English actor Esme Percy withdrew from the cast. Adding to the play's woes, it received a scathing review in the December 19 issue of The New York Times:

In this Jules Verne fabrication they introduce more ideas than they can finish coherently, and they abandon the whole project to an abortive ending. By imagining what might happen if communication were established with Mars, they turn the theatre into a scientific peep-show. ...

It drifts off into a muddle of scrappy notions, and it tosses the whole story away by proving a hoax at the end. When communication with Mars is established again it is to be hoped that, like Jules Verne, the authors have the courage of their inspiration. ...

Mr. Whorf gives an especially mettlesome performance, and manages somehow to look like Eugene O'Neill. Perhaps that is a good omen. Perhaps Mr. O'Neill will write a double trilogy on the same theme -- with masks.

Red Planet ran for only a few performances at the Cort Theatre before it closed on December 23. The performance of December 27, 1932, scheduled “for the benefit of the Tonsil Hospital at 153 East Sixty-second Street" never took place.