ABOUT Radio 930
(Radio Nine - Three - Oh)Based on an original concept by Nancy Paris & Charles Yurick
Inspired by true events…
East Berlin, 1981. Behind the Berlin Wall, a group of young rebels (The Bricks) broadcast outlawed rock & roll music from a pirate radio station in an effort to bring about social and political change.
Meanwhile the Heidts, a family born of resistance to the Nazis and now loyal to the East German regime, struggle to create normalcy in a world that is not normal. They fear for their 11-year-old daughter Anna, relentlessly indoctrinated by the State to place loyalty to the Communist Party over family, and for their son Bern, a Stasi operative who falls in love with the music, the rebels, and the woman he’s been sent to spy on.
*Special thanks to former Hungarian Ambassador to the U.S. András Simonyi for his guidance and inspiration.
radio 930
Music & Lyrics by Gaby Alter
-
The rebel Bricks spread the word about their pirate radio station 930, playing their music for anyone who will listen. Studio demo performed by Gaby Alter.
-
The beautiful rebel Maja tries to recruit Stasi officer Bern into The Bricks. Performed by Alyse Alan Louis.
-
After spending two nights in East Berlin's Hohenschönhausen prison, Bricks DJ Vanda Schuster now finds herself working for the Stasi as an informant. Studio demo performed by Gaby Alter.
-
A rebel is killed by the Stasi, and others have been captured and detained. Maja and Sig are now in hiding, believing that their mission has been thwarted and their music silenced. Studio demo performed by Gaby Alter.
CREATIVE TEAM
Gaby Alter
Music & Lyrics
GABY ALTER is the recipient of a Jonathan Larson Grant, the San Diego and San Francisco Critics' Circle Awards for Best Original Score, an ASCAP Plus Award in Musical Theater, and the ASCAP Composer's Spotlight at the LA Film Festival.
Josh Billig
Book
JOSH BILLIG is an internationally produced playwright and screenwriter. His play OUTSIDE SIKA was the recipient of the Tennessee Williams Festival Playwriting Award.
VIDEO
HISTORICAL REFERENCES
Did music help bring down the Berlin Wall? In 1969, just a rumor of a Rolling Stones concert on a tower block next to the Wall sent the East German Government authorities into meltdown. In the 1970s and 80s a bizarre alliance between East German punks and local churches was seen by the regime as a pernicious challenge. When David Bowie played a gig in the West, across the fearsome Wall, and listened to by crowds assembling in the East, it caused the Stasi no end of angst. Chris Bowlby uncovers this unheard part of Cold War history.
BBC News World Service - The Documentary Podcast: ROCKING THE STASI
In ROCKING TOWARD A FREE WORLD, renowned diplomat and musician András Simonyi charts the struggle of growing up in 1960s Hungary, a world in which listening to his favorite music was a powerful but furtive endeavor: records were black-market bootlegs; concerts were held under strict control, even banned; protests were folded into song lyrics. Get caught listening to Western radio could mean punishment, maybe prison.
East Germany may have been - until now - the most perfected surveillance state of all time. In STASILAND, Anna Funder tells extraordinary stories of ordinary people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship, and of those who worked for its vicious secret police, the Stasi.
The WENDE MUSEUM of the Cold War is an art museum, historical archive, and educational institution in Culver City, California. The mission of the Wende Museum is to preserve Cold War art, culture, and history from the Soviet Bloc countries, inspire a broad understanding of the period, and explore its enduring legacy. Named for the Wende (pronounced “venda”), a German word meaning “turning point” or “change” that has come to describe the transformative period leading up to and following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
THE TUNNELS is Greg Mitchell’s thrilling Cold War narrative of superpower showdowns, media suppression, and two escape tunnels beneath the Berlin Wall in the summer of 1962. The year after the rise of the Berlin Wall, a group of young West Germans risked prison, Stasi torture, and even death to liberate friends, lovers, and strangers in East Berlin by digging tunnels under the Wall. Then two U.S. television networks heard about the secret projects and raced to be first to document them from the inside.
HOW THE BEATLES ROCKED THE KREMLIN tells the extraordinary unknown story of how The Beatles helped to destroy the USSR. The Soviet authorities were alarmed by the seditious potential of rock 'n' roll, with The Beatles a special target and denounced as 'bugs' in official papers. Their smuggled records were destroyed and their music was banned, but the myth blossomed as bootlegs and photos were covertly traded and even rented amongst fans. The Beatles prepared the cultural way for the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately helped to wash away the foundations of that system.
READINGS/EVENTS
March/April 2022: 5-week workshop: Catholic University of America - The Rome School of Music, Art & Drama, Washington D.C.
Radio 930 Catholic University of America Workshop Sizzle Reel
GALLERY
A developmental workshop was held at the John Paul rehearsal studio at the Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art in Washington, DC. The presentation featured 4-time Helen Hayes Award nominee Tracy Lynn Olivera and actor Evan Casey, and students from the musical theater programs at Catholic University and Howard University.