A Portable Theatre's Special Halloween Show TALES FROM THE GRAVE Starts Tonight

Just in time for Halloween, A Portable Theatre will offer public performances of the touring show TALES FROM THE GRAVE, a collection of spine-tingling stories adapted by Geoffrey Nelson from Dickens, Poe and Stevenson. Presented in the style of an old-time radio broadcast, Tales also includes humorous commercials and live sound effects-all performed by just four actors.

TALES FROM THE GRAVE will be performed at the Woman's Club of Clintonville tonight, October 15, at the Abbey Theater of Dublin this weekend, October 16-17, at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in north Columbus on October 18 and at the Columbus Dance Theatre in downtown Columbus from October 29-31.

The "Golden Age of Radio" began in the early 1920s and lasted until the advent of television in the 1950s, with entire families gathering around the radio every day to listen to their favorite programs. Mysteries, adventure and detective stories, situation comedies, and soap operas were all very popular, as were quiz shows and variety hours. Popular shows included Gunsmoke, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, The Shadow, Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy and Fibber McGee and Molly.

Many of these programs were performed before live audiences. Actors gathered around standing microphones, scripts in hand, and often played several characters. Mistakes were inevitable-an actor dropping the pages of his script, for instance-and ad libs were all a part of the fun. Commercials were incorporated into the action. Live sound effects helped the home audience visualize the setting and the action.

TALES FROM THE GRAVE

'TALES' is based on three classic stories by 19th century literary masters. In "The Signalman" by Charles Dickens, a hiker encounters a mentally unsteady railroad worker, whose sightings of "ghosts" may imperil the lives of the passengers. In "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan

Poe, a meek man seeks vengeance by luring his pompous enemy into a terrible trap. In "The Body-Snatcher" by Robert Louis Stevenson, two medical students turn to grave-robbing to supply cadavers for the dissecting room-until they dig up more than they bargained for.

'TALES' premiered this past January at Ohio Wesleyan University as a part of its Performing Arts Series. An earlier version of the script was produced at CATCO in 1998.

CAST AND CREW

The cast of TALES FROM THE GRAVE are four actors with many years of stage experience in central Ohio, all members of Actors Equity, the union of professional actors.

Damian Bowerman holds an M.F.A. in Acting from OSU and has performed at the Porthouse Theatre in Kent, Huron Playhouse in Michigan, CATCO and at the Phoenix Theatre for Children. Locally, he appeared in major roles in The Seafarer, The Foursome, The Underpants, The Laramie Project and Escanaba in da Moonlight.

Jon Farris has performed leading roles at major regional theatres across the country, including the Utah Shakespeare Festival, the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, the Champlain Shakespeare Festival, the Cleveland Play House, the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, the Indiana Repertory Theatre and the Pittsburgh Irish and Classic Theatre. At CATCO, he played a wide variety of roles in plays such as Nixon's Nixon, Taking Sides, Uncle Vanya, What the Butler Saw, A Tuna Christmas, You're My Boy and in the original TALES FROM THE GRAVE.

Jonathan Putnam has performed in over 100 shows in Columbus, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Colorado, Illinois and Indiana. For twenty-three years, he was a resident actor with CATCO, appearing in such plays as Greater Tuna, The Mystery of Irma Vep, Blackbird, A Christmas Memory, The Pillowman and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). He was in the original production of TALES FROM THE GRAVE and has also performed "Crumpet the Elf" in The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris more than 150 times. Putnam is also in the cast of APT's touring show The Duck Variations by David Mamet.

Ed Vaughan has played many roles in his long career in the theatre, including King Lear and Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. On the lighter side, he has also played leading roles in Neil Simon's God's Favorite and Agatha Christie's The Witness for the Prosecution. At CATCO, he was noted for his performance as "Big Daddy" in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, as well as for roles in The Shorts Festival, Dealer's Choice, The Homecoming, The Loman Family Picnic and Speed- the-Plow.

TALES FROM THE GRAVE is directed by Geoffrey Nelson, who is also the playwright and artistic director of A Portable Theatre. Nelson has directed more than one hundred plays, including Talking Heads for APT, The Divine Sister for Short North Stage and Tartuffe for Denison University. Nelson appears with Jonathan Putnam in APT's touring show The Duck Variations by David Mamet.

Sound effect design and technical direction for TALES FROM THE GRAVE is by Diana Evans Vance, a free-lance designer and technician who served as Technical Director at Hilliard-Davidson High School for thirty-eight years.

Public Performances:

APT will present TALES FROM THE GRAVE for a limited number of public performances in central Ohio before making it available for tour bookings throughout the state:

Thurs., Oct. 15 at 8 PM - The Clintonville Woman's Club, 3951 North High Street Columbus OH 43214

Fri. & Sat., Oct. 16-17 at 8 PM - The Abbey Theater of Dublin, Dublin Community Recreation Center 5600 Post Road, Dublin OH 43017

Sun., Oct. 18 at 3 PM - St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, 1450 E. Dublin-Granville Rd Columbus OH 43229

Thurs.-Sat., Oct. 29-31 at 8 PM - Columbus Dance Theatre, 592 E. Main St. Columbus OH 43215

Tickets may be booked online at the theatre's website, www.aportabletheatre.com, or may be purchased at the door, pending availability. Tickets are $20. Student tickets are $10.

A Portable Theatre's mission is to "create professional theatre for the enrichment of communities throughout Ohio." Launched in June 2013 with a production of David Mamet's The Duck Variations (featuring Jonathan Putnam and Geoffrey Nelson), APT subsequently added a revised version of Chiquita Mullins Lee's acclaimed one-man show Pierce to the Soul (featuring Dayton actor Alan Bomar Jones) in the spring of 2014. Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, three serio-comic monologues performed by Anne Diehl, Linda Dorff and Kerry Shanklin, was added to the repertoire in the fall of 2014.