RSA student performs 1940s style radio play

By Laureen F. Guenther Times Contributor

Natalie Kloster, a fourth-year Rosebud School of the Arts student, is producing and performing her original work, The Runner, a staged radio play about a runaway German soldier during the Second World War.
“We will be mimicking a live radio play production as would have been done in the 1940s,” Kloster said. “The actors will be reading from their scripts and performing some sound effects live on stage.”
Performing with Kloster are Caleb Gordon, a RSA graduate, Jeany Snider, RSA faculty and Rosebud Theatre resident actor, and Peter Church, a guest actor who’s also directing.
“On a frigid night in 1944 Russia, a local doctor finds an unconscious German soldier far behind enemy lines,” said Kloster about the play. “He brings him home and hides the soldier in his barn.”
As the doctor’s family befriends the soldier, they begin to question everything they’d believed about their enemies.
Kloster had the idea for writing The Runner while working on the short film Waiting for Waldemar, about a German immigrant family in Russia forced to flee their homes when the Second World War began.
“Something that struck me was seeing German – Nazi – soldiers going out of their way to warn the German-Russians as the Eastern front pushed closer to Germany,” Kloster said.
She knew there was more to the Nazi soldiers than “just a bunch of evil guys.” She wanted to tell that story.
The Runner also has personal significance for Kloster, a third- and fourth-generation Canadian. Most of her great-grandparents were Germans living in Austria-Hungary and Russia. They had family members living in Russia when the Second World War began, whom Kloster never met.
Kloster hopes audiences will enjoy seeing – and hearing – a play done in radio play style, since that’s a medium that’s always fascinated her, she said.
“I also hope audiences enjoy the story of people on the other side of the war,” said Kloster. “The side that lost.”
The Runner will be performed May 10 at 8 p.m., May 11 at 4:30 pm. and May 12 at 4:30 p.m. in the BMO Studio Stage in Rosebud. Reserve tickets at silvertongue&co@gmail.com.
“Come enjoy a radio play experience like no other,” Kloster said. “Live and right before you, onstage as it would have been done back in the golden age of radio.”