[2] Directed by Hagen based on his own screenplay and musical score, the film was produced by Burning Sled Media and the Chicago College of Performing Arts.

In stream of consciousness dramatic beats, he first surveys his relationship to the works of Shakespeare, then revisits the accidental drowning of Manoel Olimpio Meira during the filming of It's All True.

He contemplates the sound of his own heart; and then lashes out, reliving the pain of his repeated loss of creative control in the editing of The Magnificent Ambersons.

He recalls Marc Blitzstein at the piano the night that The Cradle Will Rock debuted before rolling into a rollicking remembrance of the high-octane life he led, reliving the giddy joy of careening across Manhattan in a rented ambulance (to better cut through traffic) at the top of his game on his way from a Danton's Death rehearsal to the War of the Worlds radio broadcast.

He thinks back a few hours to his appearance that afternoon on The Merv Griffin Show, imagining himself as a manic marionette dancing for others’ amusement—the humiliation in having started at the top with Citizen Kane and having ended up doing wine commercials.

He repurposes Shakespeare's great Falstaff credo as he mulls over Chimes at Midnight and the role of love: Maybe I did forget, he closes, poignantly, before having a vision of Rita Hayworth and singing a tender paean to domesticity and fatherhood.

A passionate social activist, Welles' last thoughts are of the future: with the foresight available only to the dead, he mourns his country as the words of a xenophobic reality television president are intercut with Emma Lazarus' hymn to liberty.

Accordingly, the extensive electro-acoustic tracks crafted by Hagen are blended with the singers and the live instruments onstage performed by the Fifth House Ensemble.

"[11] "The collage of ragtime, synth effects and post-romantic arioso engages," admits Steph Power in a two-star review,[12] while David Denton writes, "Do please hear Orson Rehearsed as a major contribution to 21st century music theatre.