Creating Dangerously

Interview with Iryna Pravylo & Yulia Zi of the Documentary Film Flowers Beyond the Dark

Welcome to this episode of the Creating Dangerously Podcast sponsored by the Shawna Foundation. Today we have the privilege of speaking with the director, Iryna Pravylo and producer Yulia Zi of the documentary film Flowers Beyond the Dark, which will be screening at the Massachusetts Independent Film Festival, which runs from April 2 -4 in Worcester. “Flowers beyond the Dark” is an artful exploration of the human side of war, a raw witness account of people who know what it’s like to stare the enemy in the eyes, feel the pain, yet maintain hope and determination for victory. All while facing the prospect of being a victim of genocide. We get to know them, follow them in church, at home, behind the artist’s canvas, and in armored vehicles. Important links Film’s website: https://www.righttimestudios.com/flowersbeyondthedark [https://www.righttimestudios.com/flowersbeyondthedark] Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/flowersbeyondthedark/ [https://www.instagram.com/flowersbeyondthedark/] Raphael Lemkin’s article: https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/publikacija/raphael-lemkin-soviet-genocide-in-ukraine-article-in-33-languages/ [https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/publikacija/raphael-lemkin-soviet-genocide-in-ukraine-article-in-33-languages/] Book about the Holodomor: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Famine-Stalins-War-Ukraine/dp/0385538855 [https://www.amazon.com/Red-Famine-Stalins-War-Ukraine/dp/0385538855] Mass Indie Film Fest Schedule: https://www.shawnafoundation.org/ [https://www.shawnafoundation.org/] Ukrainian Poem by Yevhen Stankovych: https://music.apple.com/us/album/ukrainian-poem/1195984640?i=1195985111 [https://music.apple.com/us/album/ukrainian-poem/1195984640?i=1195985111]

Cold Coffee and Flat Diet Cola

Join Patrick Bracken and Skip Shea as they drown in the sea of the never-ending daily stories of bad news. Nothing like cold coffee and stale diet cola to lift those existential blues. But then there is the cost of Bruce Springsteen Tickets. This Episode: This year’s Oscar nominees arrive at a moment when the world feels politically unstable, socially fragmented, and morally uncertain. The films we’re discussing today—Sinners, One Thing After Another, It Was Just an Accident, and, in tribute to the recently departed Béla Tarr, his masterpiece Werckmeister Harmonies—all wrestle with questions about responsibility, truth, and the fragility of social order. In very different ways, these films remind us that cinema has always been a mirror for its time, reflecting the anxieties, contradictions, and ethical dilemmas of the moment we’re living in. Taken together, these films suggest that the most powerful stories today are not simply about heroes or villains, but about systems—systems that shape how people behave, how truth is defined, and how communities respond to fear and uncertainty. Whether through allegory, satire, or stark realism, filmmakers continue to ask the same question that great cinema has always asked: when institutions falter, what responsibility falls on the individual?

New Classics Audio Play Adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"

The Modern Classics Audio Play Series revisits foundational texts not to preserve them in amber, but to place them in conversation with the present. In this episode we adapt Ernest Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants. The original story, linked below, is a tense conversation between an American man and his girlfriend at a Spanish train station, revolving around an unspoken, implied abortion. Hemingway wrote Hills Like White Elephants at a moment when patriarchy, empire, and authority were rarely questioned aloud. Yet the story itself is built on tension rather than certainty—on what is said too often, what is not said at all, and who is ultimately asked to carry the weight of a decision. Hemingway’s work frequently exposes power as something maintained through calm insistence and silence rather than moral clarity. In this story, the imbalance of voice reveals an underlying instability: the fear that inherited authority may no longer be enough. This adaptation reframes that instability. By shifting the center of the narrative from persuasion to choice, it foregrounds autonomy as an act of courage rather than defiance. The woman’s decision is not presented as a conflict to be won, but as a departure—quiet, deliberate, and irreversible. In keeping with the mission of the Shawna E. Shea Memorial Foundation, this production reflects a broader commitment to amplifying voices that step away from coercive structures and toward self-definition. The play invites listeners to sit with uncertainty, to listen closely, and to recognize that change often begins not with argument, but with clarity—and the resolve to leave the table. Gregory Velez: The Host Tiziana Guarini: The Woman Patrick Bracken: The American Claudia Zonetti: The Barista Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway [https://www.sevanoland.com/uploads/1/1/8/0/118081022/hemingway-hills-like-white-elephants.pdf]

Rebroadcast of the 1938 production of A Christmas Carol by the Mercury Theater

Welcome to what will now be an annual event, our rebroadcast of the 1938 Mercury Theater production of A Christmas Carol. A Christmas Carol (1938) — The Mercury Theatre, Orson Welles, and the Enduring Power of Radio Drama When the Mercury Theatre on the Air presented its 1938 adaptation of A Christmas Carol, listeners expected to hear Lionel Barrymore, whose portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge had become a beloved annual tradition. But when Barrymore fell ill shortly before the broadcast, a remarkable thing happened: Orson Welles, only twenty-three years old, stepped into the role. Already known as a bold experimenter in radio, Welles not only narrated the production but also assumed Scrooge’s voice with an authority far beyond his years. What emerged was not merely a holiday episode but a defining moment in radio history. In 1938, America was still wrestling with the emotional and economic wounds of the Great Depression. Dickens’s tale of greed, poverty, and redemption resonated deeply with audiences who understood hardship firsthand. Welles and the Mercury troupe embraced that resonance. Their production is lean, atmospheric, and psychologically driven—focused less on Victorian ornament and more on the internal transformation of Scrooge. The sound design, an innovative hallmark of the Mercury Theatre, layered music, voice, and environmental effects to create vivid auditory landscapes. The result is a story experienced not just as narration, but as an immersive journey. Welles’s interpretation of Scrooge—more intense, more introspective than the jovial Barrymore tradition—reveals a young artist already exploring the depths of character and the possibilities of sound to shape emotion. Why It Still Matters Today The themes that animated Dickens and captivated both Barrymore and Welles continue to speak to us. Economic precarity, social fragmentation, and moral exhaustion mark our historical moment just as they did the late 1930s. Yet A Christmas Carol insists on the radical idea that individuals and societies can still choose generosity, empathy, and transformation. There is also something profoundly meaningful in the way Welles stepped in for Barrymore. The continuity of tradition—handed off, adapted, and preserved by new voices—mirrors the evolution of storytelling itself. Every generation inherits the tale, but every storyteller reimagines it in the shape of their own time. An Annual Tradition of Artistic Stewardship By making this rebroadcast a yearly tradition on Creating Dangerously, you join Welles in the act of keeping public storytelling alive. You revive not only a classic performance but a shared cultural ritual: gathering listeners to experience a story that has bound generations together in reflection and hope. In honoring both Barrymore’s legacy and Welles’s youthful audacity, this annual event becomes more than nostalgia. It becomes a statement. It says that art survives because artists—across decades, mediums, and personal histories—continue to pass the flame. And in that continuity, A Christmas Carol remains what it has always been: a reminder that even in difficult times, redemption is possible and kindness revolutionary.

Body Horror and a Farewell To Andrea! Not Related Subjects

Join us on this Halloween as we discuss all things Body Horror! And by that we mean movies about horrific things that happen to the human body, not about the horrors of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Bodies of Government, And, most importantly, we bid farewell to one of our cohosts, Andrea Wolanin who moves on to bigger and better things. We are truly grateful for her time and commitment to the Shawna Foundation and helping with our podcast and we look forward to having her on as a guest when we can discuss the cool new projects she is up to. Thank you Andrea.