Station Archive

On tonight’s broadcast, swing era and the 1950s: Cab Calloway, Fats Waller with Jack Teagarden & Eddie Condon, Louis Armstrong, Quintette du Hot Club de France, Sammy Price And His Bluesicians, Ella Fitzgerald, Shorty Rogers, Oscar Peterson, Illinois Jacquet, Ernie Wilkins And His Orchestra, Bobby Hackett, and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis.

It’s 1909, and the Golden Fleece Traveling Players have arrived at the Woodland Opera House to present a melodrama, Daughter of the West. But strange accidents disrupt preparations for the performance — and the ghost of William Porter, who has haunted the Opera House since dying there in a fire in 1892, takes credit for the trouble when he appears to one of the company’s players.

This is a partial synopsis of the WOH’s current play, Ghost of the Woodland Opera House, and here’s the Halloween angle — some of the story is true. Today on Davisville we talk with Matthew Abergel and Bob Cooner, the co-authors of the play, which Matthew is also directing.