THE WAR OF WORLDS - HOWARD KOCH

​

Alexandre Plank has reworked Howard Koch’s script, offering us a new version that is more musical than Orson Welles’s, bringing on board composer Quentin Sirjacq for this creation.

This public recording is, for us, a tribute to Orson Welles but also a tribute to radio itself, to its art of production and to its vitality: it shows how a director in his thirties can, today, take hold of the work of a pioneer of radio.

Blandine Masson, Head of Fiction Programming

“At the same time as The War of the Worlds, that founding myth of radio, it is to radio itself that I would like to pay tribute. A public performance at the Maison de la Radio seems to me an ideal opportunity to celebrate, alongside the genius of one man, the genius of an art form — one defined by its subtle nature and its sudden flashes of brilliance, by its tricks and its bits of string, and by the clever way in which it addresses the world.

With seven musicians and six actors, we will recreate in Studio 105 Welles’s mischievous experiment using a range of techniques that have shaped the history of our craft: from the string quartet to the sampler, from magnetic tape to digital technologies, with a stop along the way for sound effects. We will trace a history that, however shifting it may be, has always sought to act upon and influence our imagination, in order to represent and transform our reality.”

Alexandre Plank

​

Cast
Olivier Broche, Emmanuel Matte, Vladislav Galard, Maelia Gentil, Andréa Busque
And the voices of: Elissa Alloula, Heidi Zada, Pauline Ziadé, Antoine Berry-Roger, Clément Bresson, Guillaume Marquet, Philippe Ciboulet

​

Musicians
Anthony Capelli – analog synthesizer, percussion
Yoann Durant – saxophones
Quentin Sirjacq – piano, keyboards, percussion

and the Ellipse Quartet (Strings)
Lyodoh Kaneko – First violin
Youngeun Koo – Second violin
Allan Swieton – Viola
Florent Carrière – Cello

​

Sound effects: Bertrand Amiel