Seeing through the radio

The Centennial Community Players rehearse the radio-drama performance of "It's a Wonderful Life," the Christmas story on Tuesday evening at the Woodlawn Arts Academy in Sterling. The show will run from Friday to Sunday. The performance will feature actors on stage at Woodlawn, with a sound effects person and runs from Friday through Sunday. Tickets may be purchased at the Woodlawn Arts Academy. (Chris Padgett/SVN)

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STERLING - Jim Henry's eyes never leave the script as he fidgets with the carefully chosen knickknacks on the table before him. It's not because he's engrossed in his reading and trying to balance his hobbies. He's the foley artist - the guy in charge of sound creation - for the Centennial Community Players' "radio play" performance of "It's a Wonderful Life," which opens Friday at Woodlawn Arts Academy. While the six actors reinvent their voices to match the show's 15 characters, Henry is busy darting between ends of a card table, carefully crafting Frank Capra's Christmas world with a menagerie of sounds: He topples buckets (trips over trash cans), tosses Tic-Tacs (measures prescription pills), slams shut a refrigerator (closes a car door) and crunches corn flakes (treks through dense snow), all within a 6-foot space. "This guy's going to be the star of the show," said actor Edwin Davis, 71, of Wheaton. "We're just reading the parts." In this incarnation of the holiday classic, the cast, dressed in period clothing, will perform on stage as if they were in a studio, reading the play over the radio. Henry, 46, lives and works in Sterling, where he got the bulk of his theater experience after his son and daughter got him involved with set construction for plays at Sterling High School. Although he's no stranger to the local drama scene, Henry said performing "It's a Wonderful Life" as a radio play has been a much different experience. "You can get away with a lot of stuff when the audience can only 'watch' it through the radio," he said. This will be the Centennial Community Players' first radio play, said actress Suzie Branch of Rock Falls. Branch, too, has been involved in several productions. The 46-year-old has spent 5 years with the Players and a had short dramatic arts career following her theater studies at Northern Illinois University. Unlike those shows, though, the extra-big emphasis on maintaining a healthy voice has virtually glued her scarf to her neck for the last several weeks, Branch said. It's also made her kick caffeine. "Mornings are more difficult than anything else," she said with a laugh. "And mid-afternoon, you hit that slump." She needs a healthy voice, though - Branch is playing parts ranging from adults in their 60s to George Bailey's daughter, little Zuzu. "You have to work on things to make them different and very distinct, so [the audience] can tell that you're being somebody else," Branch said. "That's been the hardest thing." Director Tim Tedrick said the classic 1946 Jimmy Stewart movie upon which the play is based has had great cinematic longevity for two reasons: Unlike most other movies, its copyright wasn't renewed, which means TV networks can show it for free. Beyond that, "It's a Wonderful Life" paints an attractive picture of small-town life common in other Capra films, such as "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." "It has that vision of Americana that we like to think of about ourselves," said Tedrick of Sterling. "[Capra] was always sort of an optimistic filmmaker." There's also a sense of relevance to 2008, thanks to the film's famous bank scene, in which a mob of townspeople concerned about losing their money demand to know where their investments are. "I would love to be able to say that we were so prescient knowing that this would be so timely," Tedrick said. "But I can't. It just happened." To attend "It's a Wonderful Life," a radio play performed as if the cast were in a studio, reading the play over the radio, will be staged at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Woodlawn Arts Academy, 3807 Woodlawn Road, Sterling. Tickets are $12 for adults and $6 for students. For more information, visit Centennialauditorium.org or call Tim Schlegel at 815-622-3542, or Woodlawn Arts Academy at 815-626-4278.