Columbia Workshop

Reis also experimented with readings and dramatizations of poetry, including works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Masefield and Edgar Allan Poe.

One of the most notable presentations of Reis's tenure was Archibald MacLeish's original radio play, The Fall of the City.

With a cast that included Burgess Meredith, Orson Welles and 300 students, the play was notable for its portrayal of the collapse of a city under an unnamed dictator, a commentary on fascism in Germany and Italy.

As part of CBS's commissioning of five classical composers to write original works for radio, Deems Taylor narrated a concert (November 7, 1936) which demonstrated the possibilities of idiomatic music composition for radio by playing orchestrations of three works by staff arranger Amadeo de Fillipi.

He had composed his first radio drama for the Workshop, but it was only after his second program, Rhythm of the Jute Mill (broadcast December 12, 1936) that the appointment was made.

On the broadcast of December 23, 1937 (the first of a two-part dramatization of Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking-Glass), it was announced that William N. Robson had succeeded Irving Reis as director of the Columbia Workshop.

Though the Workshop continued some experimentation, Robson placed greater emphasis on good dramatic adaptations, rather than didactic explanations of radio techniques.

His San Quentin Prison Break, originally broadcast prior to the Workshop on January 16, 1935 was based on an actual incident.

Known more as a film director, Pare Lorentz wrote and directed Ecce Homo, a story concerning the relationship of man and technology.

The Workshop extended its experimental mode by preceding the new MacLeish play, Air Raid with a broadcast of its rehearsal.

Stephen Vincent Benèt continued to write for the Workshop, and author Wilbur Daniel Steele made his own adaptations of his previously written short stories.

Given Corwin's strong interest in issues of the day, it is ironic he left the Workshop just one month prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

There were a few significant programs (historically the most interesting of them is probably the airing of John Cage's and Kenneth Patchen's The City Wears a Slouch Hat).

production: George Zachary "The Creation" was a dramatization of a paraphrase of James Weldon Johnson's book of "Negro poems and verse" "God's Trombones"