TIME
The play takes place in 1985 and in 1923,
jumping back and forth
PLACE
Various locales in the United
States of America: the backroom of a hardware store, a farm, a cliff, a
backyard, a street, an expensive suite in Kansas City's Muellbach
Hotel, a parlor, a train platform, a jail cell, a shed, etc.
The Rise
of Radio
The Voice of the Prairie is set in 1923,
as Americans started tuning in to a new technology
In today’s society, technology impacts our daily lives more
than ever before. The internet alone has changed who we are and how we
relate to the world. With features like e-mail, Google, Amazon.com,
eBay, and Match.com, the internet has forever altered how we
communicate, how we shop, how we gather information, how we date – and
how we live. The Voice of the Prairie takes place over 80 years ago
during what seems like a entirely different time. But people in the
1920s were dealing with their own technological revolution – the radio.
Just like the internet, the radio started off completely unregulated
and changed people’s lives in ways they couldn’t imagine.
Something like broadcast radio had been envisioned by theoretical
physicists in the 19th century, but the breakthrough came in the early
20th century with the invention of the wireless telegraph and the
vacuum tube. Some early radio pioneers used radio to broadcast
entertainment to small audiences, but in 1917 the U.S. government
ordered all amateur radios to shut down and remain silent so the
airwaves could be used for air and naval operations, thus stopping the
nascent industry in its tracks.
But after the war, the government lifted the ban on amateur radio
broadcasts, and pioneering entrepreneurs enthusiastically invaded the
field, rapidly producing a series of historic “firsts.” The first radio
news program was broadcast on August 31, 1920, on the station 8MK in
Detroit. In November 1920, the first commercial radio station in the
United States was established – KDKA in Pittsburgh, which received the
first official government license. In 1922, the first regular
entertainment programs were broadcast. One of the highlights from this
time was the first Rose Bowl broadcast on January 1, 1923, on the Los
Angeles station KHJ. This is around the time that The Voice
of the Prairie takes place.
Within a few years, the new industry had transformed the
landscape, as hundreds of stations entertained thousands of people who
bought or built their own receivers. Many of these stations were owned
by businesses, whose sole purpose for
broadcasting was to sell products. The radio dial was filled with
hundreds of unregulated transmitters, many interfering with each other
and causing bad reception. The Federal Radio Commission was formed, and
the Radio Act of 1927 was passed which reassigned stations to clearer
frequencies. For the first time, radio stations were required to
operate in the public interest. In the late 1920s, David Sarnoff’s NBC
and William Paley’s CBS became the first radio networks.
By the early 1930s, a radio could be found in virtually every
household in America. The radio networks were
broadcasting nationally, and provided a variety of entertainment
including live and recorded music, comedy, soap operas, serious drama,
and quiz shows. In the depths of the Depression, President Roosevelt’s
“Fireside Chats” attracted more listeners than any other show, as
entire families across the country gathered around the radio for
comfort and reassurance. By the end of the 1930s, with war looming in
Europe, radio also became a vital source for news. Then, in the 1950s,
television took over, capturing the nation’s imagination just as radio
did 20 years earlier.
SPECIAL
THANKS
Derek Bjornson, Brad Brown,
House of Props, Rebecca Kessin, Brianne Levine, Joan Rohrback, Harry
Rose, Michael Tauzin, Wadler Data Systems