WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 @ 5:30pm EST:
Deconstructing The Twilight Zone #8: “SHADOW PLAY” webinar via NY Adventure Club
Rod Serling’s immortal television series The Twilight Zone used the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres to tell incisive stories that dealt with the social and societal issues of its time. In doing so, Serling and Co. created some of the most indelible half-hours of filmed television drama ever made.
One of those half-hours was The Twilight Zone season two episode, the aptly titled “Shadow Play” (the second of writer Charles Beaumont’s two great Twilight Zone episodes about the nature of dreams and reality; the other, season one’s “Perchance to Dream”), which plays out like a tense, taut television noir: though convicted murderer Adam Grant desperately tries to share his recurring nightmare of electrocution with his fellow death-row inmates, the district attorney, the press, beseeching anyone who’ll listen that they, too, are all part of his dream, it is to no avail—he is condemned to walk the last mile every night.
“Shadow Play” also introduces the concept of “meta” to the 1961American television audience, perhaps for the first time, as Beaumont’s underlying premise is that Grant’s “corny” dream of death row is only based on what he’s seen in “bad” movies! By the end of this grim but gripping episode, we are finally sharing Grant’s recurring nightmare with him.
So join New York Adventure Club and pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, Visions from The Twilight Zone and The Five Themes of The Twilight Zone) as he deconstructs “Shadow Play” via discussion and dissemination of clips from the episode, along with stills, behind-the-scenes material, and collateral images and ideas culled from both the episode’s time, and our time, so that even the most ardent aficionados of The Twilight Zone will feel as if they’ve seen “Shadow Play” for the first time!
TIX: bit.ly/3U2tYIp
CAN’T make it LIVE? Buy a ticket so you can watch a video recording of the webinar for 1 week!