CYGNET RADIO HOUR

Produced by Cygnet Production for your listening pleasure. All episodes are free to listen and share. 

Thank you from all of us to all of you! 

Host & Director: Louanne Moldovan 

A Christmas Carol. Charles Dicken’s classic Christmas tale is brought to life by a cast of seven using an original script by Lisa Barck Garofalo, a cofounder of Portland’s New Rose Theatre. In this production, Dickens himself narrates the action, giving extra resonance to his vivid characters and the glorious renaissance of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Find yourself transported into the front room of the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth where your hostesses Audrey and Olivia will lead you on a romp through the lives and letters of Charlotte Brontë (author of Jane Eyre) and Emily Brontë (best known for Wuthering Heights)—with a few zany detours. The duo's blundering comedy is right out of the British farce playbook.

Oh no, my sweetie is gone!

Take a listen to this snappy, catchy duet with the boisterous Gavin Hoffman and Michael Mendelson in this circa Roaring 20s tune composed by the brilliant Rody Ortega for the Cygnet Radio Hour presentation of The Wild Party.

Composed by Rody Ortega
Based on Bee's Knees by Ted Lewis and Ray Lopez 1922

The Wild Party is a jazz-age, book-length narrative poem throbbing with passionate rhythms. Louche characters of all sorts engage in colorful debauchery, while main characters Queenie and Burr circle each other in a cynical, dangerous game of sexual power.

About the Playwright

Joseph Moncure March (1899–1977) was best known for his long narrative poems The Wild Party and The Set-Up. He attended Amherst College and was a protégé of Robert Frost's. He left school to enlist in the U.S. Army in 1918; he participated in the Saint Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives. In 1919, he was discharged from the Army, returned to school and graduated Honoris Causa in 1920.

Listen in as Artistic Director Louanne Moldovan and Sonia Sabnis, Associate Professor of Greek, Latin, and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Humanities at Reed College, discuss the power and poetry of language and rhyme in The Wild Party.

Haunting, magical, mystical, Faith Healer tells the story of Francis Hardy, an Irish travelling faith healer, his wife Grace, and his Cockney manager Teddy. This play was voted as one of the 100 most significant plays of the 20th century in a poll conducted by Royal National Theatre and has been named by The Independent as one of the "40 best plays of all time." This Cygnet Radio Hour production stars Bruce Burkhartsmeier as Frank, Artists Rep company member Vana O’Brien as Grace, and Keith Scales as Teddy. Bruce and Vana were recorded live in the studio. Keith was recorded virtually from Arkansas.

Director Louanne Moldovan and Gemma Whelan, artistic director of Corrib Theatre in Portland, Oregon, discuss the power and potency of the language in Faith Healer.

XINGU By: Edith Wharton

Mrs. Ballinger and the ladies of the Lunch Club, that exclusive group dedicated to literature and erudition, are eagerly anticipating a visit by the noted novelist Osric Dane. Her books have been read by all the members except their newest, Mrs. Roby, whose idea of a perfect novel is one that entertains and preferably ends with marriage for the hero and heroine. It's painfully clear to Mrs. Ballinger and the others that Mrs. Roby is not on their intellectual plane...

Our Companion Conversation is with director Louanne Moldovan and Dr. Jay Dickson, Professor of English and Humanities at Reed College, discussing Xingu’s relevance today.

© 2021 Cygnet Productions

This is the book that, in 1938, jolted America into recognizing the Nazi threat. The setting is 1932. Jewish Max lives in San Francisco; gentile Martin has taken his family back to the “new” Germany, where Max’s sister is on the stage. The letters they exchange chronicle the corrosion of their friendship as Martin is swept up in a warped Nazi ideology driven by intolerance. Address Unknown is as relevant today as it was in 1938.   

READ THE PLAYBILL

Producer/Director Louanne Moldovan and Senior Rabbi Michael Z. Cahana of Congregation Beth Israel in Portland, Oregon, will discuss why and how Address Unknown is relevant today, for Jews and for people of all faiths (or none).

Cygnet Productions produces plays and staged readings derived from diverse forms of literature: books, letters, short stories, epic poems, plays, essays, and ephemera. In 2021, we launched the companion Cygnet Radio Hour to produce “theatre for the ear.”

Cygnet Radio Hour is presenting plays, poetry, and fiction professionally directed and performed by accomplished actors.

Our productions are captured in one take, so you enjoy the same immersive, engaging pleasure of a live theatre experience. We invite you to lean back, close your eyes and… open your ears.

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