Please join us in the IU Libraries Screening Room for "Listening to Orson Welles on the Air" at 7:30pm on Thursday, October 26. 

Orson Welles created the iconic radio drama, The War of the Worlds, in 1938. That program is still widely known today, but what makes Welles’s larger body of radio productions distinctive and important?

In celebration of the launch of the digital project, Orson Welles on the Air, join scholar Patrick Feaster for a guided tour through the radio innovations of Orson Welles. Feaster will speak at 5:30 PM, and repeat his presentation again at 7:30 PM. A reception will be held in between the talks at approximately 6:30 PM.

Supported in part by the National Recording Preservation Foundation, the Orson Welles on the Air project preserves, digitizes, and makes available online original sound recordings and associated scripts for Orson Welles radio productions, including his critically acclaimed series Mercury Theatre on the Air and Campbell Playhouse, as well as the war-time productions Ceiling Unlimited and Hello Americans, and many more.

The Libraries Screening Room is located on the ground floor of the Wells Library, room 0448. Please note: no food or drinks are permitted in the Screening Room.

Patrick Feaster is Media Preservation Specialist for Indiana University's Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative.  A three-time Grammy nominee and co-founder of the First Sounds Initiative, he has been actively involved in identifying, preserving, and analyzing many of the world’s oldest recorded sounds, including the earliest surviving works of audio theater.  Feaster is the author of Pictures of Sound: One Thousand Years of Educed Audio as well as a variety of album notes and articles on media history and theory.  He received his doctorate in Folklore and Ethnomusicology from Indiana University Bloomington in 2007.