of Austria." The experimental aspect of The Fall of the City was "the use of the natural paraphernalia of the ordinary broadcast, that is to say, an announcer in the studio and a reporter in the field...a very successful device it turned out to be. It gives you a Greek chorus without the rather ridiculous self-consciousness involved in carting a chorus in and standing them against the wall and having them recite. These people have a function; they are recognized by large audiences of nonliterary people as being proper participants." When asked about the significance of the conqueror, MacLeish replied: "The conqueror is not the central figure. It's the people, crowding around and approaching him...It's a play about the way people lose their freedom. It's not a play about the Fascist master." In later years, MacLeish recalled the first staged production at Smith College. "I realized at the time how much The Fall of the City'' owed to not being seen, how much it owed to the fact that the imagination conceives it, because these choral figures kept getting terribly in the way of what I had seen in my own mind...I didn't like the Smith production very much. There were several stage productions that I saw, but I didn't like any of them." References External links Columbia Workshop — The Fall of the City at the Internet Archive Photo Gallery: Wade Thompson Drill Hall Library of Congress essay on radio show included in the National Recording Registry. 1937 radio dramas 1937 radio programme debuts 1937 radio programme endings American radio dramas Farrar & Rinehart books CBS Radio programs 1930s American radio programs United States National Recording Registry recordings