Across The River

Series
WBAI And NPR Playhouse
Original Broadcast Date
3/27/1984
Cast
Arthur Miller, Paul Mantell, Lester Nafzger, Avery Hart, Joe Frank
Format
Improv Actors, Panel Discussion, Absurd Monologue, 27 minutes
Preceded by:	A Tour Of The City (Part 2)
Followed by:	A Pact With God
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"About ten, fifteen years ago there was a great scare that strontium ninety was going to cause cancer..."

Across The River is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series WBAI And NPR Playhouse. It was originally broadcast in 1984.

Synopsis

A panel discusses the dangers of strontium-90 and -91 fallout over the sounds of a crowd and a folk singer with a guitar singing badly.

3:00: Joe comes on as an energetic MC, backed by Horace Silver's Kissin' cousins, talks nonsense, closes the show.

8:10: Panel discusses alternative forms of energy, such as playing football games on treadmills, other sports to capture the energy of.

10: Guy announces sound effects, numbered (gun shots, breaking glass...)

12: Panel discusses new energy bar and nuclear energy.

14:40: Joe talks nonsense, 'The trees are hung with women's braids, children's shoes, telescopes, and violins. There are reindeer in the windows of steaming Chinese laundries...'

16:00: Panel discusses nuclear radiation to create mutants, other uses of nuclear energy.

22:10: Joe the MC is back, yells at the audience for trying to leave. He pleads to be told the time.

23:10: A guy on the panel (Lester Nafzger? He mentions Woodstock) claims that there are 50 million fewer people in the country since the invention of nuclear energy, ascribes the decrease to it. They discuss more alternative forms of energy.

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Legacy Synopsis

A bad folk singer sings about strontium, owning the sun. Men at a table discuss Strontium-91, the positive aspects of radioactive materials. A nightclub MC talks about living forever, his agent, a blind man and a cripple, etc. Panel discussion on alternative power sources: sports, human waste. A list of sound effects against a woman humming. Panel discussion: the benefits of radiation. Monologue: The trees are hung with objects. . . "on the other side" . . . "the wind does not feel the wind." Panel discussion: cancer as pure growth, progress; treadmills powering an apartment building. MC asks the time.

Music

• "Kissin' Cousins" - Horace Silver (from Silver 'N Brass, 1975) | YouTube [3:18]
• "Lantern Marsh" - Brian Eno (from Ambient 4 (On Land), 1982) | YouTube [12:23]

Shared material

• The Other Side (Show)

Miscellanea

• Joe re-used almost all (possibly all) of this show, in pieces, in The Other Side (Show)

Additional credits

The original broadcast credits state: "[M]ixed by Jim Anderson. The performers were Arthur Miller, Paul Mantell, Lester Nafzger, Avery Hart, and Joe Frank."