University radio drama staging America's past, letters and all.
Adventure OTR's recent episodes come from American Adventure, a radio drama produced at Chapel Hill and carried on NBC, with casts drawn from University of North Carolina students, faculty and townspeople. The stories range from a South Carolina planter bound for the Alabama frontier to a Massachusetts man who would not shave his beard and landed in jail.
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Adventure OTR carries old-time radio, and its recent episodes come from American Adventure, a drama series produced and recorded by the University of North Carolina and heard on the NBC network. The series introduced itself as a study of man in the new world, asking who he is, what he believes and what he lives by. One opening goes further, calling America 'man's greatest adventure in time and space.' The ambition is large. The scenes are often small. In the pioneer story, a South Carolina planter named Eli heads for the Alabama frontier, and a long scene turns on a letter home: leaky cabins, snakes and lizards and mice, curtains hung in a house with no windows, and a worry about getting every word right at 25 cents postage. The broadcast says its letters and journals are the pioneers' own, and credits Fletcher Green's edited collection, The Lieds Go South and West. A second story follows Joseph Palmer, a Massachusetts man of 1830 who would not remove his long beard and spends nearly three months in the dark in a jail, where he tells a visiting preacher to go home. A third sets Pierre L'Enfant before commissioners who press him on the purpose and price of a cascade in his plan for Washington, D.C., and the questioning has a dry, comic edge. Not every script claims the record. The Demagogue follows a politician taking reporters and a donation aboard a train, and its closing announcement calls the story fictional, concerned with the problem rather than any real individual. Slavery surfaces more than once: a planter's night while searchers hunt for runaways, bare footprints under the eaves, and a character recalling the cargoes of a Yankee brig built in Maine. Credits name John Ely as writer, John Clayton as director and Earl Wynn as director of the university's Communications Center. The casts were students, faculty and townspeople of the University of North Carolina community. Charles Kuralt plays Eli, William Trotman plays the Doctor, and Bill Waddell plays Mr. Lear, Washington's assistant. The recordings keep their broadcast framing, including an NBC promotion for a daytime program called Weekday and sign-offs noting origination from WPTF in Raleigh. Funding credits are read on air too, naming the Educational Television and Radio Center and the National Association of Educational Broadcasters. Those details make the recordings artifacts as well as plays. A good first stop is the pioneer story, where one domestic scene carries the whole idea of the series. The L'Enfant episode shows the writing's lighter side.
Made for: Suits a listener who enjoys old-time radio drama and American history told through individual lives, and who likes hearing the original broadcast credits and network announcements left in place.
What sets it apart: The recent episodes are university-made historical dramas: several are presented as documented or based on fact, one of them built on real letters and journals, the casts came from the University of North Carolina community, and the recordings keep their NBC credits and announcements.
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A beard goes to trial, and you get to hear the defendant cross-examine the razor.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Eli Lide's Alabama letter turns frontier promise into rough cabins, improvised furniture, and family strain.
American Adventure follows Eli Lide, a South Carolina planter pulled toward a fresh start in Alabama while still answerable to a wife, children, a plantation, and family ties.
A Senate campaign's forceful rhetoric is tested by money, pointed questions, and the people gathered around its candidate.
The Demagogue follows a Senate campaign as public conviction hardens into political force. It opens at a baseball stadium, where Mr. Matthews draws applause after a powerful speech, then moves onto a train crowded with reporters, staff, and contributors.
A rain-soaked kitchen and two sets of footprints turn a planter's choice into tense moral drama.
A rain-beaten plantation kitchen turns into a quiet trap for John Williams, a planter hiding two wounded runaway slaves while Mr. Blake and the sheriff keep pressing for answers.
A beard becomes the front line in Joseph Palmer's stubborn fight to remain a free man.
Joseph Palmer's beard becomes the unlikely center of an American Adventure drama about personal liberty, as a Massachusetts community treats one man's refusal to shave as something close to a public offense.
Pierre L'Enfant brings a city-sized vision to a meeting that keeps asking about costs, maps, and water.
American Adventure's "Paint the Big Canvas" frames the founding of Washington, D.C. as a dryly funny room full of competing priorities: Pierre L'Enfant with his grand design, and practical men trying to understand what it will cost, how it will be mapped, and how buyers will…
Tamil historical fiction with royal stakes.
American Adventure’s “The Pioneer Call” follows Eli Lyde, a South Carolina planter who moves his family and slaves to Alabama, then later feels drawn toward Texas.
Adventure OTR’s “The Demagogue” follows Senate candidate Ronald B.
A radio drama about a North Carolina planter facing a moral decision regarding runaway slaves in the slavery era.
A dramatized story about Joseph Palmer, a man in 1830s Massachusetts who was persecuted and put on trial for refusing to shave his beard.
Adventure OTR's "Paint the Big Canvas" centers on Pierre L'Enfant's plan for Washington, D.C., including a two-mile park, a 160-foot-wide avenue, and a capital laid out around the land.
American Adventure dramatizes the "Federal Lion," a gift from the Emperor of Morocco to President Andrew Jackson that the consul at Tangiers accepted despite an order against gifts.
This University of North Carolina radio drama, written by John Ely and directed by John Clayton, stars Phil Johnston as John Chapman, who plants apple orchards ahead of the American frontier.
Joan Fleason, told at 10 p.m.
This episode introduces the series American Adventure, exploring the soul of America as a living organism through dramatizations.
An old circus man tells a boy named Tommy Davis the story of Toby Tyler, a red-haired boy who ran away with the circus.
Count Byron de Proroc and his team discover a valuable gold necklace in the Sahara while being spied on.
An adventurer recounts his 1924 search for the lost tomb of Queen Tin Hinam in the Sahara Desert.
A dramatized adventure story set in 1812 about piracy and courage during the Napoleonic era, based on G.A.