Best broadcasts of 1938-39 (1939)

BEST CLASSIC PLAY ADAPTATION The Trojan Women by Euripides Translated from the original Greek by Edith Hamilton Radio adaptation by Harry MacFayden From Great Plays QQBOQQOOOflfljHIOQflaQQOOOQQQOQQOQOQQQQQQQOOOOOOOOOI Great plays is the logical outgrowth of the timehonored Radio Guild of the National Broadcasting Company. For ten years, starting in 1928, this program offered every week a one-hour adaptation of a stage play. It started with the melodramas of the 1870’s and i88o’s. It approached Shakespeare and during the years gave over seventy one hour adaptations of Shakespearean plays. It dealt with the Greeks, and it came down to contemporary playwrights as its audience and its budget grew. There were one or two things lacking about the old program, however. One was a pattern or arrangement of the plays so that each successive week offered a work that had some special reason for being chosen for broadcasting in that week. Another was the crying need for informing that large but widely separated audience for plays of this nature that they were on the air and were available. Mr. Blevins Davis, who came from the Yale School of Drama, has done yoeman work in preparing study manuals giving background material which were available in advance of the broadcasts of the second year. These manuals are prepared weU before the broadcasts, and thousands of them have been purchased by colleges, schools, and libraries so that classes and listening groups may know in advance something about the play and its author and thereby enhance their listening pleasure when the broadcast is actually given. 546