Radio Plays : Actors at the MET Theatre in Hollywood give voice to dramas and comedies meant to be heard to be appreciated

Actors naturally want to use all they have to bring off a role. Their walk, gestures, body movements, posture and voice all come into play when working on stage.

But at the recently revived MET Theatre in Hollywood, a group of actors are attempting to create rounded characters using just one of those elements--the voice. There is nothing new about this, of course; radio plays were once one of our primary forms of entertainment.

To a generation of actors who came into the business long after the golden age of radio, though, this kind of acting presents a new challenge.

“It is like taking everything that is emotional and psychological about a role and putting it through a sieve,” said Alfre Woodard, a two-time Emmy winner who has also done a good deal of prestigious stage work. “You have to squeeze it all down to one sense, hearing, and everything has to be conveyed through that.”

Woodard is one of the actors in two current readings series that benefit the MET. The readings of radio dramas and comedies continue Wednesday nights through Sept. 4, with Gregory Harrison, Robin Riker, Beth Henley and others taking part. A Great Writers short story series is held Tuesday nights, with actors Tim Curry, Annie Potts, Carol Kane and Christina Pickles, among others, reading from the stage.

The regular short story series continues through Sept. 17 and will be followed by special performances on Sept. 18 and on Oct. 9, when author William Styron will read from his own works.

Riker, a MET board member and a regular on the offbeat Fox-TV comedy “Get a Life,” on which she played the evil Sharon, had the idea of doing the readings as a benefit. “We were planning for our future and that future included rent,” she said.

From 1973 through 1985 the MET was the 40-seat home of plays by numerous emerging playwrights such as Jon Robin Baitz and John Steppling. Earlier this year a few members of the original MET and several newcomers, such as Riker, revived the company and took over the Hollywood space that once housed the Los Angeles Actors’ Theatre before it moved downtown and became the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

“We needed to raise money with something that would be a crowd pleaser and could play on weeknights when the theater was normally dark,” Riker said. “And it had to be something that could be done on the set of the show we had playing there on weekends.”

Riker had been a member of the Variety Arts Radio Theatre, which read old radio plays on the stage of the now defunct Variety Arts Theatre downtown. “I loved radio and it struck me as perfect for what we wanted to do,” she said. With the board’s approval, she asked one of the founders of the Variety Arts radio group, Roger Rittner, to choose and direct the radio plays.

Rittner’s love of the medium borders on fanaticism. At one point he single-handedly transcribed 15 years worth of episodes of the Texaco Star Theatre radio show. He directed several radio plays for National Public Radio and is an active member of the Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety and Comedy.

“Sometimes it seems my main purpose in life is keeping radio drama alive,” said Rittner, who now has a company that makes promotional in-house announcements for businesses in the style of old radio shows.

At the MET, he directs the radio readings on stage with broad gestures reminiscent of a symphony conductor. It’s similar to what Orson Welles used to do when he directed radio.

“It adds another visual element to the show for the live audience,” Rittner said.

Riker said she didn’t have to work hard to persuade actors to participate. “Radio gives you a wonderful opportunity to do roles you would never get a chance to do on stage,” she said. She pointed out that for the MET production of an episode from a vintage radio series called “The Unexpected,” actor Joel Brooks played the part of a dwarf who sells a mysterious doll to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley.

“Joel is 6 foot 3,” Riker said with a laugh. “No one would ever let him do that on stage. I myself have played both an 8-year-old boy and an 80-year-old woman in radio plays.”

The featured segment of the first MET performance in the series was “Sorry Wrong Number,” a classic radio thriller by Lucille Fletcher about an invalid woman who overhears a frightening telephone call. The lead role, once a signature piece for actress Agnes Moorehead, was read by Woodard.

The audience was absolutely silent as she urgently portrayed the woman who realizes only too late that the murder she hears being planned is her own.

“It gives you such a sense of freedom to do this kind of work,” said Woodard, a MET board member. “If I was on stage doing this play I’d have to make sure that every movement of my hands, every gesture of my eyebrows, the way I push my little feet across the floor, all conveyed whatever specific idea I was trying to get across at that particular point of the piece.

“But when you are just reading, there is no actor’s ego. Your only responsibility is to the words, the ideas on paper. It is more fantasy than an actor’s performance. It’s liberating.

“And for an actor, it is a lot of fun.”