- Play:
- Title: Meridian 7-1212
- Author: Irving Reis
- Director: Robert Arnold
- Date Posted: January 22, 2012
- Length: 24:43 minutes (22.67 MB)
- Format: MP3 Mono 44kHz 128Kbps (CBR)
Various lives intertwine through the telephone time service in late-1930s New York. A recreation of an Old Time Radio broadcast originally aired on The Columbia Workshop on August 24, 1939.
 |
 |
 |
Special bonus material! This additional scene was part of the script but was cut from the original broadcast version of the show. (04:07, 3.77 MB)
Cast and Crew
| Role | Name | |
| Opening Announcer / Mr. Bradley | ..................... | Bennett Wood |
| Dot Day | ..................... | Lee Bryant |
| Helen Cleary | ..................... | Lyric Peters Malkin |
| Watkins | ..................... | Robert Arnold |
| Fawcett | ..................... | Marques Brown |
| John | ..................... | Ron Gephart |
| Grace / Miss Waller | ..................... | Ann Sharp |
| Joe | ..................... | Matt Reed |
| Scott | ..................... | Kevin Murphy |
| Percival | ..................... | Jason Spitzer |
| Ed | ..................... | Chuck Hodges |
| Neal | ..................... | Matthew Crewse |
| Johnson | ..................... | Chris Jowers |
| Joe (Bonus Scene) | ..................... | Ross Williams |
| Pete (Bonus Scene) | ..................... | Stephen Garrett |
| Musician | ..................... | Matthew Crewse |
| Sound Effects | ..................... | Karen Strachan |
| Producer | ..................... | Eric Sefton |
| Director | ..................... | Robert Arnold |
| Announcer | ..................... | Tom Badgett |
| Artist | ..................... | Karen Strachan |
Special Thanks to:
- Jack Ward of The Sonic Society
- Billie Jean Hampton
- Susan Johnson
- Mike Hanrahan
Notes
Created alongside The Shadow: The Little Man Who Wasn’t There for The Sonic Society’s Summerstock Playhouse series, Meridian 7-1212 shows how much power is left in the best Old Time Radio scripts. By turns thrilling, heartbreaking, hilarious, melodramatic, and just plain fascinating, Meridian weaves a sophisticated web of characters, relationships, and ideas. The phone lines crisscrossing New York lead us through this tale of near misses, misunderstandings, deceptions, and conversations that never get completed.
A vignette-style show gave us the opportunity for a large, dynamic cast, and I couldn’t be happier with the group we assembled. As is typical of Chatterbox productions, the show was rehearsed and recorded in a continuous take, and it was incredible to feel the mood shift in the room as we moved from each story to the next. Sonically, Eric’s crisp, skillful sound design transports us from place to place with complete clarity. And the extraordinary shadow-box art by Karen Strachan is as intricate, thoughtful, and sadly beautiful as the show itself.
The phone service at the heart of Meridian 7-1212 may be outdated, but the questions raised by writer Iriving Reis remain as pertinent as ever. Chiefly: If advances in technology bring us closer together, then why do we feel so alone?
--Robert Arnold
Additional Material
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
