Published: Sunday, November 25, 2007 - 2:00 am in The Greenville News

Christmas tradition: The cast of "It's A Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play" rehearses at Centre Stage last week. Photo by Collin C. Chappelle, Greenville News.

By Ann Hicks
Arts Writer
ahicks@greenvillenews.com

With a six-actor ensemble, Centre Stage -- South Carolina will retell the 1940s Frank Capra classic film "It's A Wonderful Life" as a live radio show Nov. 29 through Dec. 16.

Asked how he transformed a movie with a large cast into a small ensemble radio show, playwright/actor Joe Landry fills in the blanks.

The jovial 36-year-old says his creation grew out of, and was nurtured by, his love of cinema, acting, writing and the telling of inspirational stories.

Landry's first job as a teenager was in the film department of the public library in his hometown of Fairfield, Conn. Back then, in the 1980s, movies were on 16-mm reels, and people rented them and the projector from the library, he says.

"Seems like every job I had involved movies in some fashion, from working in the local cinema to later working in video stores," Landry adds.

One of the films on the library shelf was the 1946 Capra film noir "It's A Wonderful Life," starring Jimmy Stewart as small-town banker George Bailey, who is saved by his guardian angel as he contemplates suicide on Christmas Eve.

Landry says he fell in love with the movie.

"It's a great combination of sentimentality, the treatment of some dark subjects, along with many, many lighter moments," he says.

As a youngster, Landry took acting lessons with high school drama teacher Frances Kondziela, to whom he's remained close.

It was Kondziela who asked Landry, in 1989, to write a stage adaptation of "It's a Wonderful Life" for her high school ensemble.

While the film's large cast would make it cost-prohibitive for a stage production in regional theaters, he says, rewriting the play as a radio show works. And, after all, the era the movie is set in -- the 1940s -- was the height of radio drama's popularity.

"It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Show" premiered at Landry's Connecticut-based Stamford Arts Center in 1996. It has been performed there with success in the ensuing years.

In the late 1990s, word spread about the feel-good Christmas show, and other theaters began to produce it around the country, he says.

Last year, he had an additional boost as his play was published by Playscripts.com, he says, and that's how Centre Stage -- South Carolina, along with many other theaters, found it.

Landry says he tries to get to as many of these productions as he can. There are at least three on his immediate itinerary.

He says the timeless tale is worth retelling because its message of hope and transformation continues to touch audiences.