{
  "title": "THE BLUE SPHERE",
  "category": "[STAGE-PLAY; RADIO-SCRIPT]",
  "article": "This obscure one-act play by American novelist Theodore Dreiser was first\npublished in the December 1914 issue of The Smart Set, followed in 1916 by a\nhardcover appearance in Dreiser’s Plays of the Natural and Supernatural.\n“In Plays of the Natural and Supernatural by Theodore Dreiser, written in 1916\nbefore the ‘psychological religion’ was so widely accepted, the author…assumes\nthat many spirits and forces whisper into the ears of human beings, causing them\nto be wicked, heedless of ethical and moral responsibility, and to commit crimes.\nThe early Dreiser sees the same grim landscape as he later would depict in Sister\nCarrie, but in the plays he sees this landscape animated by phantasmagoric forces\nand creatures. There is even a malevolent spirit form he describes as ‘the Blue\nSphere’…[that] leads a disabled child toward the railroad tracks and an\n‘accidental’ suicide.”\n“…of a female shadow who employs a magical blue sphere to tempt a\ndeformed…”\n[H. L. Mencken] “All five plays ‘of the supernatural’ follow a single plan. In the\nforeground, as it were, we see a sordid drama played out on the human plane,\nand in the background (or in the empyrean above, as you choose) we see the\noperation of the god-like imbecilities which sway and flay us all. The technical\ntrick is well managed. It would be easy for such four-dimensional pieces to fall\ninto burlesque, but in at least two cases, to wit, in ‘The Blue Sphere’ and ‘In the\nDark,’ they go off with an air.”\n[Margaret Tjader, Theodore Dreiser: A New Dimension (1965)] “…psychic\nphenomena had always seemed real to him as when he had gone to séances, and\nplayed with Ouidja boards, or glimpsed the strange, horrible faces he said he saw\nsometimes around his bed at night.”\nBilled as “It was presented over a German radio station last June… Verse for\n‘The Blue Sphere’ was adapted by Mr. Dreiser from his book of ‘Plays of the\nNatural and Supernatural’.”\n“Theodore Dreiser’s play, ‘The Blue Sphere,’ which he has set to verse and\nmusic, will be presented for the first time in America in this form… It was last\npresented over a German radio station last June.”\n[Cleveland Plain Dealer] “The cast will include Margaret Mower, whose last\nappearance on Broadway was in ‘The Vikings’...\n[Pittsburgh Press] “The first American production of a drama which Theodore\nDreiser wrote especially for radio will be the highspot of the [CBS] show tonight.\n‘The Blue Sphere’ is founded on one of Mr. Dreiser’s recent short stories [sic] and\nhe is said to have insisted on making the adaptation himself in order that he\nmight avail himself of the advantages of the radio which is peculiarly fitted to his\nsymbolical realistic theme. ‘The Blue Sphere’ has had but one other presentation,\nin Hamburg, Germany, a few months ago.\n“Any work by Mr. Dreiser is interesting at this time because of the prominent\npart he occupies as an exponent of realism in the current controversy on\nHumanism. His best known works include ‘Sister Carrie,’ ‘The Genius’ and ‘An\nAmerican Tragedy.’”\n[Dorothy Scarborough, The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction, 1917] “He\ngives curious twists to the unearthly, as in The Blue Sphere, where a shadow and\na fast mail are among the dramatis personae, typifying the fate idea of the old\ndrama. The shadow lures a child monstrosity out on to the railroad track, after he\nhas caused the elders to leave the gate open, and the train, made very human,\nkills the child.”\n[Keith Newlin and Frederic E. Rusch, The Collected Plays of Theodore Dreiser,\n2000] “It is not Dreiser’s realistic plays, however, but his supernatural plays that\nhave had the most influence on subsequent playwrights… Thornton Wilder was\nreportedly influenced by Dreiser’s expressionistic depiction of synchronous\nmovement. Richard Gladstone, who knew Wilder well, suggests that The Blue\nSphere in particular provided Wilder with a method for depicting ‘scenes of\ncontinuous and even simulataneous action’ that Wilder would employ so\nmasterfully in Our Town.”\n[Program information]",
  "origination": "ha, Hamburg; WABC, New York City, New York (CBS).",
  "duration": "June 12, 1929 (ha); June 4, 1930 (WABC).",
  "personnel": "Georgia Backus (director—1930, The Voice of Columbia),\nHoward Barlow (musical conductor—1930, The Voice of Columbia), Hans\nBodenstedt (translator—1929), Theodore Dreiser (scriptwriter), Hermann Erdlen\n(music—1929), Lina Goldschmidt (translator—1929).\nCAST [1930, The Voice of Columbia]: Jack MacBryde (Galloway), Margaret\nMower (Mrs. Delavan), Gertrude Riley (Mrs. Minturn), Anthony Stanford\n(Peterson), Harry Swan (The Conductor), Louis Veda (The Shadow), Graham\nVelsey (Delavan).",
  "extant_recordings": "None.\n[Program log]\n(HA, HAMBURG)\n[Wednesday—8:00-9:00 PM]\nJune 12, 1929\n“Die blaue Kugel”\n[The Times: “Theodor Dreisser Programme—songs and\npoems; ‘The Blue Ball,’ play…”]\nTHE VOICE OF COLUMBIA (WABC, NEW YORK)\n[Wednesday—10:00-11:00 PM]\nJune 4, 1930\n“The Blue Sphere”\n[“…Theodore Dreiser’s play ‘The Blue Sphere,’ which he has\nset to verse and music, will be presented for the first time in\nAmerica in this form…”]",
  "chronology": "",
  "sources": "",
  "gallery": "",
  "images": []
}