Waterlogg Classic Literature Pack: Anton Chekhov, O. Henry, Stephen Crane, and William Shakespeare
About this audiobook
This collection provides over five hours of radio dramatizations of some of the greatest literature ever written, as adapted, produced, and directed by Joe Bevilacqua.
The Bear: A Classic One-Act Play by Anton Chekhov
The Bear, one of the great works of Anton Chekhov, tells about the strange beginnings of love between the recently widowed Mrs. Popov and Grigory Stepanovich Smirnov. In Russian the word for “bear” has two meanings: an animal or a rather rude, clumsy, awkward man. The cast includes Cathi Tully, Bob Miller, and William Duff-Griffin.
“Tobin’s Palm” by O. Henry
William Sydney Porter, known by his pen name, O. Henry, was an American writer. O. Henry’s short stories are known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings.Waterlogg Productions will be releasing the complete works of O. Henry.
“The Pace of Youth” by Stephen Crane
This adaptation of Crane’s classic short story was produced with wonderful sound effects and music by veteran radio-theater producer Joe Bevilacqua, who is joined in the cast by William Melillo, Cathi Tully, Peter Cummings, and Leslie Spital.
Hamlet
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark dramatizes the revenge Prince Hamlet is instructed to enact on his uncle Claudius, who had murdered his own brother, seized the throne, and married his deceased brother’s widow. Joe Bevilacqua produced, directed, and performed in this radio adaptation. The cast includes Margaret Dunn, William Melillo, Jay Snyder, James Cronin, William Evans, Peter Cummings, Christine Solazzi, Rick Ramos, Jayson Ternan, Phil Duffy, Mark Yablonsky, John Fernandez, Thomas Babkowski, Leslie Spital, Keith Lander, Bob O’Connor, Alan Cobb, Andrew Heil, John Alston, William Conrad, Ben Wright, John McIntire, Jannette Nolan, Sammy Hill, and Fred McKie.
About the author
Joe Bevilacqua, also known as Joe Bev, is a public radio producer and radio theater dramatist. However, his career has taken him into every aspect of show business, including stage, film, and television as a producer, director, writer, author, actor, journalist, documentarian, and even cartoonist. He is also a member of the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York City.
William Shakespeare was born to John Shakespeare and Mary Arden in late April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. He wrote about 38 plays (the precise number is uncertain), many of which are regarded as the most exceptional works of drama ever produced, including Romeo and Juliet (1595), Henry V (1599), Hamlet (1601), Othello (1604), King Lear (1606) and Macbeth (1606), as well as a collection of 154 sonnets, which number among the most profound and influential love poetry in English. Shakespeare died in Stratford in 1616.
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), the author of hundreds of short stories and several plays, is regarded by many as both the greatest Russian storyteller and the father of modern drama. He described the Russian life of his time using a deceptively simple technique devoid of obtrusive literary devices, thereby becoming the prominent representative of the late nineteenth-century Russian realist school. His early stream-of-consciousness style strongly influenced the literary world, including writers such as James Joyce.
Stephen Crane (1871–1900) was an American novelist, poet, and journalist. He worked as a reporter of slum life in New York and a highly paid war correspondent for newspaper tycoons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. He wrote many works of fiction, poems, and accounts of war, all well received but none as acclaimed as his 1895 Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage. Today he is considered one of the most innovative American writers of the 1890s and one of the founders of literary realism.
O. Henry (1862–1910), born William Sydney Porter in Greensboro, North Carolina, was a short-story writer whose tales romanticized the commonplace, in particular, the lives of ordinary people in New York City. His stories often had surprise endings, a device that became identified with his name. He began writing sketches around 1887, and his stories of adventure in the Southwest United States and in Central America were immediately popular with magazine readers.
Lorie Kellogg is a busy graphic and voice-over artist as well as a skilled improv comedian. She studied painting, printmaking, and video and film at the Kansas City Art Institute and the California Institute of the Arts.
