Chaste Kiss & Chrysalis
Season 13, Episode 02
February 17, 2025
Audio dramas by Jack J. Ward
Re-Imagined Radio samples "Chaste Kiss & Chrysalis," two radio dramas by award-winning Canadian writer, producer, and director Jack Jamie Ward. February is the month of love, and Valentine's Day. Both of Ward's dramas are edgy love stories in the style of Golden Age of Radio science fiction. "A Chaste Kiss Goodbye" considers love between humans and purpose-built companion robots. "Chrysalis" is a revisioning of the classic radio drama "The War of the Worlds" as a layered love story, for aliens, humans, and machines. An episode of our Guest Writer/Producer series. Thank you for listening.
Access the episode script
Background
Jack likes to call his works "audio dramas." They're his passion. "Audio Drama has a vibrant community of like-minded artists," he says, "nothing quite matches the immediate response that can come from producing a story in the audio format."
We agree, and would add, "Nothing quite matches listening to well-crafted radio stories."
Learn more about Jack J. Ward→ and his extensive bibliography
Production
Contents
This episode of Re-Imagined Radio features two audio dramas by Jack J. Ward.
"A Chaste Kiss Goodbye"
Cassidy is living her best life on her last day alive. But, what will happen to her husband Paris when he goes back to the Reclamation Centre? This is an original audio drama, written and produced by Ward's Sonic Cinema Productions as part of his Retro Rockets Anthology series based on the early explorations of golden age radio science fiction reimagined for a new audience. Length: 20:23.
"'A Chaste Kiss Goodbye' was the product of my fascination with how creations . . . especially Artificially-conscious creations of humanity . . . would interact with us," says Ward. "And how would their own objectives cross and intersect with their original purposes. Would they be happy with their original programmed directives? Or would they want to control their own futures?"
Credits
A Sonic Cinema Productions feature for the Retro Rockets Anthology, 2024
Jack J. Ward, Writer and Producer
Jessica Kinney as Cassidy
Peter Sauber as Paris
Theresa Ireland as Helen
Lothar Tuppan as host
"Chrysalis"
Eighty six years after Orson Welles' radio drama changing broadcast of "The War of the Worlds," Ward
and
others at Sonic Cinema Productions fired off this Retro Rockets special for World Audio Drama Day. Joe
Darrow meets up with ex-girlfriend Ana Anke, and they work together to discover what strange object fell
from Mars and landed at Stoney Creek! Length: 49:28.
About "Chrysalis," Ward says, "it comes from my long-term desire to write my own version of 'The War of the Worlds'. So many great audio drama groups have recreated Orson Welles' classic invasion story, or extended the tale in some way. But I wanted to take the bare bones of Welles' epic—strange ships sent to us from Mars, a crash landing in a nearby farmer's field, even the famous Martian horns of the tripods—and weave a different kind of science fiction horror, with a different species, a different threat, and even an entirely different solution."
His revisioning of "The War of the Worlds" is a layered love story, for aliens, humans, and machines, that considers love from a complexity of angles and even brings in the dragonfly, mythological symbol for love and sex and sexuality. In the end, the children, who have been on Earth for years, hiding in their human chrysalides, seem to reject their parents and run away with the first radio transmitter they can find. A very interesting story, and very interesting approach to the genre of golden age radio science fiction.
Credits
A Sonic Cinema Productions feature for the Retro Rockets Anthology, 2024
Jack J. Ward, Writer and Producer
Tom Konkle as Joe
Stephanie Stearns-Dulli as Doctor Ana Anke
Angela Young as Bethany
Pete Lutz as Boz
With David Ault, John Bell, and Robert Arnold
Editing by Austin Beach
Music by Sharon Bee
Lothar Tuppan as Host
RiR Credits
Original stories written by Jack J. Ward
Produced and Hosted by John F. Barber
Sound Design, Music, and Post Production by Marc Rose
Promotional Graphics by Holly Slocum
Social Media by Rylan Eisenhauer
Significance
This the third time Re-Imagined Radio has featured Jack J. Ward, a Canadian award-winning writer, director, actor, and producer of audio dramas, as a Guest Writer/Producer. We sampled from his "Good Day for a War" for our 16 May 2022 production of Fall of the City. Our June 2023 episode Coast To Coast, featured four science fiction fantasy stories produced by Ward's production collaborative, Sonic Cinema Productions, for his Retro Rockets Anthology series. All were original radio dramas "from the Golden Age of Science Fiction to the undiscovered worlds of the future."
Producer's Notes
It's good to feature Jack's audio dramas again.
— John F. Barber
Promotion
Press
Graphics
