''Unshackled!'' is a
radio drama
Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatized, dramatised, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the liste ...
series produced by
Pacific Garden Mission, in
Chicago, Illinois
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
, that first aired on September 23, 1950.
It is one of the longest-running radio dramas in history and one of a very few still in production in the United States. The show is aired over 6,500 times around the world each week on over 1,550 radio outlets, and is translated and re-dramatized into eight languages on six continents.
As of January 2022, over 3,707
episodes have been produced, each 30 minutes in length. ''Unshackled!'' is produced in the same way as shows during the
Golden Age of Radio: Actors record dialogue live before a studio audience, an organist plays live incidental music, and a sound-effects person plays sounds in real time as the show progresses. The show has retained a consistent and distinctive quality throughout its years of production, established by Jack O'Dell's 40-year tenure as its producer/director from 1950 to 1990.
Characters and stories
Each production dramatizes the testimony of someone who converts to
Evangelical Christianity
Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that emphasizes evangelism, or the preaching and spreading of th ...
, sometimes, the person converts either during or after a visit to
Pacific Garden Mission or the person converts after hearing ''Unshackled!'' on the radio. Episodes include the life stories of baseball-great-turned-evangelist
Billy Sunday, himself a
Pacific Garden Mission convert, and Dominic Mance, an international banker who became a homeless vagabond nearly overnight. Past members of the cast and crew range from current actors to
Golden Age of Radio personalities such as Harry Elders, Bob O'Donnell, Jack Bivans, Stan Dale and Russ Reed.
With rare exceptions, the scripts are derived from actual testimonies and actual events. Beginning in the 1950s,
comic book
A comic book, comic-magazine, or simply comic is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panel (comics), panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and wri ...
versions of many ''Unshackled!'' stories were also produced.
See also
* ''
Adventures in Odyssey'' (1987–present), another long-running Christian radio drama.
References
External links
*
''Unshackled! Podcast''
American Christian radio programs
Christian fundamentalism in the United States
Christian radio dramas
American radio dramas
1950 radio programme debuts
1950s American radio programs
1960s American radio programs
1970s American radio programs
1980s American radio programs
1990s American radio programs
2000s American radio programs
2010s American radio programs
2020s American radio programs
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