Performed by Metropolitan Performing Arts, the special radio broadcast can be heard on three area radio stations:
- KXRW FM, Vancouver, WA; 99.9FM and online at KXRW.FM
- KXRY FM, Portland, OR (aka XRAY); 91.1FM and 107.1FM, and online at XRAY.FM
- AM 1310, Portland, OR; 1310 AM
"Normally, Re-Imagined Radio performances are offered as live events. COVID restrictions make this impossible so we are pivoting to our center, radio." says John Barber, producer. "We will offer our special two-hour performance on three area radio stations, both as regular broadcasts and as live streams." The performance will be archived at both the KXRY website (KXRY.FM) and Barber's own Re-Imagined Radio portfolio website (www.reimaginedradio.net).
In addition to the radio drama, "A Radio Christmas Carol," the performance will also include music and caroling by the Metropolitan Performing Arts Carolers and others.
"A Christmas Carol" was published by Charles Dickens in December 1834, and has never been out of print since. A number of adaptations have been made of Dickens's novel, notably the December 24, 1939 Campbell Playhouse radio dramatization narrated by Orson Welles and starring Lionel Barrymore as Ebenezer Scrooge. Welles voiced the part of Scrooge in an earlier Mercury Theatre on the Air performance, December 23, 1938. The plot is well-known: Ebenezer Scrooge, an old miser, cold of heart and spirit, is transformed by three visits from Ghosts of Christmas into a kind, generous and compassionate man. He gives Bob Cratchit a raise and becomes a second father to Tiny Tim. The story brings joy and festivities to the seasonal holidays.
Re-Imagined Radio, led by John F. Barber, considers how radio dramas and other programs from the so-called "Golden Age of Radio" (1930s – 1950s) were originally created, communicated and consumed as a form of storytelling, and how they might be re-imagined as live literary-media art and performance for contemporary audiences.