
Way out West
Actors Kerry Shale and Amelia Lowdell present an adventure way out west with outlaws, lawmen and a soundtrack featuring Copland, yodelling cowboys and the Doors.
Join the actors Kerry Shale and Amelia Lowdell for an adventure way out west with outlaws, lawmen and a soundtrack featuring Copland, yodelling cowboys and The Doors.
Producer: Zahid Warley
(Image: Cattle Skull in Monument Valley, Arizona, America)
Scroll down the webpage for more information about the music used, and the Producer's Notes.
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Timings (where shown) are from the start of the programme in hours and minutes
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John Steinbeck
Highway 66, read by Kerry Shale
Walt Whitman
Pioneers! O Pioneers, read by Amelia Lowdell
Mark Twain
Roughing It, read by Kerry Shale
Cormac McCarthy
All the Pretty Horses, read by Amelia Lowdell
Zane Grey
Rider of the Purple Sage, read by Amelia Lowdell
Willa Cather
My Antonia, read by Amelia Lowdell
Christian Wiman
The Preacher addresses the Seminarians, read by Kerry Shale
Sherman Alexie
How to write the Great American Indian Novel, read by Amelia Lowdell
Franc Johnson Newcomb
The Murder of Narbona, read by Kerry Shale
Frank Norris
McTeague, read by Kerry Shale
Producer's Notes - Way Out West
Before space was declared the final frontier it was the West – the American West to be specific - with pioneers pushing constantly into territory which though often inhabited by Native Americans was unfamiliar to those who came as settlers. The lure was lucre and land, of course, but curiosity and the wonder of discovery also played their part. The West was a place in which the imagination could roam and exploring it could be a matter of re-invention as well as re- discovery. Way out West follows some of these trails with music by composers such as Aaron Copland and Ferde Grofé as well as the odd Roy Rogers’ cowboy yodel and the dark psychedelia of The Doors, a band whose songs rather like their native California stand on the fault line of the American Dream. The West has inspired writers too - Mark Twain, Willa Cather and John Steinbeck as well as Sherman Alexie, Walt Whitman, Frank Norris and Zane Grey. The experiences they describe are as varied as the landscape in which they unfold – small and intimate at times – scenes of an almost ineffable happiness – then tumultuous, or fraught with a reptilian, green- eyed, greed. No time to hang around then – saddle up and join Kerry Shale and Amelia Lowdell for a trip Way out West.
Producer: Zahid Warley
Broadcast
- Sun 27 Dec 2015 17:30
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