During the Thanksgiving week, Nov. 22 through 26, KPFZ, 88.1 FM will air an original radio version of “Driving Miss Daisy.”
This version will have the same cast as the play that ran to thunderous applause and standing ovations every night during its 2003 production in Lower Lake. Actors reported that the audience “had tears in their eyes.”
The play’s producer, Ginger Ingersoll, said that the Lake County production “was different from the movie. It was a fresh, new interpretation.”
Producing the radio version of this play was not easy. Although the actors performed the play in two hours, it took another six months for Andy Weiss, producer of the radio version, to turn that performance into a play that would make sense on the radio.
To begin with, people had to generate sound effects giving clues to the radio listener about actions on stage: doors closing, footsteps, trash being taken out and background party noises. Musical clues and transitions then had to be added, and the whole project had to be edited into a cohesive whole.
“Driving Miss Daisy,” written by Alfred Uhry, was first produced on Broadway in 1987 and received the Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama in 1988.
As the screenwriter for the play, Uhry received an Academy Award in 1989 for Best Adapted Screenplay.
The play takes place in Atlanta, Georgia, where Uhry grew up, and it covers a 25-year period between 1948 and 1973.
Through the story of a developing friendship between the Jewish woman Daisy Werthan and her African-American driver, Hoke Colburn, Uhry hints at some of the wounds all Americans were experiencing during that period – and offers hope for healing.
“Driving Miss Daisy” will air as a one-hour play, followed by an hour of interviews and commentary, at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 22; 9 p.m. Monday, Nov. 23; 11 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 24; and at two times on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, Nov. 26 – 3 p.m. and 9 p.m.
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