Chichester: remembering a remarkable earthquake heroine

A remarkable but forgotten 1960s heroine will be brought to the stage in a “heartwarming and authentic” evocation on south-coast stages.

Down to Chance tells the little-known true story of local radio reporter Genie Chance who courageously kept broadcasting and saved lives in the aftermath of the 1964 Alaskan earthquake, the strongest recorded in North America and the second strongest in the world ever.

Directed by Caleb Barron, the two performers in the piece are Ellie Jay Cooper, who wrote the play, and Matthew Staite. Between them, they play nearly 30 characters.

Ellie first came across the story of Genie during the pandemic – the story of an earthquake and a community trapped in their homes in the aftermath. In the circumstances, it struck a chord. The play is the result.

Performances on the tour include: The Nest at Chichester Festival Theatre, Oaklands Park, Chichester on October 23 at 8pm; and The Pavilion Atrium, WTM, Pavilion Theatre, Marine Parade, Worthing on October 25 at 7.30pm.

“The earthquake was the biggest in American history but not many Americans have heard of it,” Ellie says. “We have had Alaskans come and see the show and say that their parents remembered it or whatever. It was certainly in living memory but not many people seem to know that it happened.

“It was 1964 and it was Good Friday around 5.30pm. Everybody had gone home. It was 9.2 on the Richter scale, the second biggest earthquake in recorded history, and it lasted four minutes. It really destroyed the infrastructure. The whole main central high street was totally ripped up. Half of it was nine foot above the other. And this massive building collapsed. The older buildings kind of survived. The newer ones struggled. But for an earthquake that big there was a surprisingly low loss of life, about 139 people, partly because most people were at home and so they were spread out and not clustered together in the newer bits of town.”

But the point is that they were stuck in their houses in the aftermath, which is when Genie Chance’s radio skills came to the fore.

As Caleb says: “She was in downtown Anchorage and she happened to be on her way back from work and have her mobile radio unit with her, linking her up with the main radio station. The kind of technology that you could use to broadcast from down the road was relatively new but she happened to be down town.”

Which put her in a position to be the key means of communication for the whole community.

As Ellie says: “There are hours and hours of her, of her footage, that you can listen to. She was a journalist and so she archived it all. She understood the importance of this historic moment. You can hear her voice. She is really calm. She talks with calmness.”

And the point is that she became a focal point for passing on messages to people via the radio – that their loved ones were safe or calling for drivers to turn up in a certain location.

“She was in Alaska but in Seattle someone held up her broadcast to a microphone and her voice was bounced all the way around the US. It's an incredible story.”

And that's what the production will be telling – using plenty of scarves and coats and items authentic to the time.

“The way we make theatre is to make it quite cinematic. We are thinking what would we do if it was a film. So there are lots of short scenes and we are having to be in like six places at once as different characters. It's quite some feat, and I think that makes it really enjoyable for the audience to watch.”

Caleb added: “We also have a very immersive sound design. A sound designer has done a lot of work to create the real sound of an earthquake and the aftershocks, and we have crafted a way of pinging the sound out to a lot of physical radios that we have. Whenever Ellie or Matt are playing a character that’s on the radio, their voices are being sent out to the physical 1960s-style radios that we have in the audience.”