Radio Drama Revival

The end of the world is nigh, and we're going out with a bang with a mondo 90 minutes of audio theater madness celebrating the 'leave nothing for tomorrow for there is no tomorrow' fatalistic hopes of the likely to be uneventful Mayan Apocalypse. First up on our roster, a taste of Jazz Book on Tape by Jason Samilski, a romping, erratic, jiving and growling exploration of the post-industrial age combining voice, effects, and music. We then have Phil Proctor, founding member of The Firesign Theatre who eulogizes the late Peter Bergman and details Bergman's explorations of Mayan ruins in Mexico on an episode of Joe Bev's Comedy-O-Rama hour. Next is the absurdist irreverent comedy Llamageddon, produced by Wireless Theatre Company and written by the aptly named No Cause for a Llama. The end of the ages is at hand and ... seriously, you think THESE guys can stop it? Wrapping it all up is Ancient Evil, a short piece by Monique Boudreau released by Aural Stages' Dialed In series. When an ancient Aztec curse is released in the archaeology lab, who on campus is responsible for cleaning up the mess?

Graphic - FunGraphix.com Theme music - Shane Lamb Title: Captain Radio Explores AudioDrop Central Production Company: Angry Viking Productions Writer/Director/Producer: Eric Ericson Type: Drama, Comedy Genre:  Multiple -- Sci-fi, Action, Suspense, Satire Length: 10-15 minute-long episodes Rating: AudioDrop™ Universe: AD-G thru AD-PG13; Velvet Curtain Series: AD-PG13 thru AD-R* Availability: Download from  http://audiodropcentral.com for $.89 per episode.   Greetings, Audionauts! Captain Radio™ here with visit to AudioDrop  Central. As modern independent audio theater production continues to flourish, one expects the art form and its distribution to begin turning a few corners. Previously, we reviewed Jason Samilski’s ground-breaking content shift. Now comes AudioDrops Central, hoping to merging and extend successful content development and distribution approaches employed by other media, both past and present, for audio theater.   Angry Viking Productions populates AudioDropCentral.com with varying collections of 10-15 minute multi-genre audio episodes. These range in tone from risqué humor to intense drama and through settings from the Civil War aftermath to Capone’s mob-run Chicago to the outer edges of the universe and the imagination. [AUDIO SOUND BYTE] “Adam”, featuring the voice talent of John Tuttle and Andrew Staton, is the digital autobiography of a lost deep-space probe that gains sentience. It comes from AudioDrop’s Fantastic Worlds sci-fi series which fondly echoes old Golden-Age pulp and comic magazines while revitalizing plots with updated scenarios and circumstances. This initial resemblance to pulp mags and comic books is no coincidence. The goal of Angry Viking Productions, principally led by Eric Erickson, is to blend immersive FX, original music, and professionally portrayed, engaging scripts into a new 3D audioscape not unlike modern adult comic books that also feature complex plots and characters and thrilling, near-3D artwork exploding from the slick pages. To emphasize the intended connection further, the AudioDropsCentral.com web site visually displays series logos as comic book covers arrayed on shelves and stresses that all AudioDrop Central episodes somehow conform to an over-arching “universe”, just as most action-adventure comic books do. If the Audiodrops™ Universe series most resembles comic book store open shelves, The Velvet Curtain series of mature comedy, satire, and drama would definitely be veiled from prying young ears. In addition to WWI satire and Chicago mob drama, this series showcases audio adaptations of comic artist Nick Cuti’s “Moonie the Starbabe”. These ribald romps follow Lauren Matthews as Moonie, a curvy, buxomy Barbarella space adventurer with attitude and her two craven astral miner sidekicks, Andrew Staton and Scott Bailey: [AUDIO SOUND BYTE] Finally, like Fantastic Worlds, the Murder, Incorporatedseries inherits heart and soul from the venerable comic book’s visceral tales of suspense, intrigue, and tangible peril, often stretching the boundaries of sanity: [AUDIO SOUND BYTE] “The Soccer Mom”, featuring Elizabeth Moore as the anonymous title character with Jon Tuttle as her “detective” listening foil, is AudioDrops’ most popular piece. In this frightening tale of taught suspense and fatal impulse, the backdrop effects during Moore’s monologues spontaneously evoke flashback scenes which seem as real in the listener’s mind as video might to the listener’s eye. Primarily under Eric Erickson’s scripting and direction, most AudioDrops™ episodes achieve good continuity while offering generally an in-depth quality listening experience (headphone listening recommended) as well as entertaining dialog and respectable performances. While “The Soccer Mom” is clearly a performance stand-out, as with a good food court, it’s well worth sampling more than one item at AudioDropCentral.com

This week on the show we welcome back our friends at the Icebox Radio Theater with an original story by Mike Murphy, "I'm Dreaming of a Tropical Christmas." It's blazing hot on the North Pole, Blitzen is getting blitzed, Rudolph's red-nosed and red faced and Santa Claus is slogging it out for the tourists trying to make ends meet. Is this all that is going to become of the ho-ho-holidays? We lead with a teaser of the BBC classic dramatization of The Hobbit, available on the BBC Audiobooks website AudioGO.

For our kick-off to the holiday season, we have the Christmas classic "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens, in a new adaptation by Shane Salk, featuring a star-studded cast. Salk's fresh take on the classic puts the ghosts back full force in the story of Scrooge, pressed on the full palette of your imagination.  Featuring Maurice LaMarche, Rob Paulson, Neil Flynn and other celebrated voice actors. It is Christmas Eve, and the air outside is as cold as Scrooge’s heart. Come nightfall, Scrooge receives three visitors: the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Each spirit takes him on a hair-raising journey through time, yielding glimpses of Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit—and even Scrooge’s painfully hopeful younger self. Will Scrooge’s heart be opened? Can he escape his cursed fate?  Also featuring a little dose of the Spanish language version, Un Cuento De Navidad. The full production available for sale on Audible and Amazon.com in both English and Spanish.

Graphic - FunGraphix.com Theme music - Shane Lamb    Title: Jazz Book on Tape Writer/Director/Producer: Jason Samilski Type: Drama-Comedy Genre:  Social Satire Length: 20-minutes Rating: AD-PG13* (brief course language, possibly disturbing dystopian images) Availability: Free to listen at http://www.prx.org/pieces/71219-jazz-book-on-tape#description Producer’s Description: Jazz Book on Tape is a lucid, hyper-visual radio play featuring 10 voices, approaching dialogue and monologue scenes through a poetic tapestry--essentially creating jazz expressions within the framework of the spoken word. Worlds spin into worlds, which spin into worlds. Soundscapes, sound effects and music go to create an original air of non-conventional audio storytelling. Feelings of apocalyptic frenzy, contrasted with utopia. At once a bleak reality check, sparkling prose, and social commentary.  ----------------------------------------------------- Greetings, Audionauts! Captain Radio™ here with a review of Jazz Book on Tape, an apocalyptic social vision from writer/producer/musician, Jason Samilski.   On our modern independent audio theater landscape, where writers and producers most often acknowledge creative bonds to the Golden Age of Radio, Jason Samilski comes off as a savvy feral child rebel. A multi-faceted musician as well as a poet/composer, Samilski keenly comprehends the highly portable emerging iSound environment. Boredom, he notes, “with the measly eighteen thousand hours of music on citizen listeners’ hard drives and portable players”, creates sustained hunger for fresh material. Given audio theater’s uber-flexibility and potentially low- to no-cost independent production price tag, Samilski naturally adopted that path to “let the dog out” on his abundant creative talents and fill the unsatiated gap. Truly evocative audio montages resulted, such as Jazz Book on Tape, a steamy, withering dark-humored dramatic essay on post-industrialism, that opens with a litany of symptoms which prophetically resemble the current Hurricane Sandy ongoing urban nightmare: [AUDIO CLIP] Jazz Book, a self-proclaimed poetic tapestry of jazz expressions played out through the spoken word, is loosely held together by observational sound bites from a young, claustrophobic societal dropout. However, the rapidly changing aural landscape relies on cross-generational voices that segue back and forth, rapidly and intensely interstitching foreground perspectives with the background musical mood oscillations of Samilski’s mostly original soundtrack. Some of these exchanges become painfully insightful as does this view of a “normal” newscast, delivered by shallow talking heads, and replayed later from memory etched in a child’s mind: [AUDIO CLIP] Then follows a decisively fatalistic young woman (perhaps one of the “newscasters” who reaches adolescence?), expressing these deeply-stamped impressions through tedious minimalistic pop rock: [AUDIO CLIP] While Jazz Book seldom backs off the pedal during this darkly dystopian tale, it does offer minute clues to what may have gone wrong, suggesting slight hope that our post-industrial apocalyptic juggernaut may yet be re-routed: [AUDIO CLIP] Jazz Book condenses its visceral psychological rollercoaster ride through society’s ills into a mere 20 minutes, probably requiring at least a focused second listening. Its artistic approach recalls to me a Norman Corwin audio spectrum tour de force, while it’s substance poetically enjoins George Orwell’s 1984 with T. S. Elliott’s masterpiece, The Hollow Men, rendering a fresh, if also as bleak, assessment of a modern dystopia, one that may expire, not with a bang, but a whimper.   Listen to Jazz Book on Tape, writer/producer Jason Samilski’s sobering and oft ironically humorous audio montage of a waning post-industrial society, by visiting PRX.org and Searching for the title. Rated PG-13 for brief course language.

This week on the show we have 19 Nocturne Boulevard back, with their 2011 Ogle-winning production "Ghost of a Chance." For a girl living in a New York Brownstone with an absentee father, life can be tough.  Luckily, have virtually unlimited trust-funds and a poltergeist nanny and butler make life considerably easier.  But when mean-spirited strangers come to call, it's going to take more than just her wits to keep her way of life intact.... "Ghost" was written by Julie Hoverson, contemporary audio drama's most prolific diva, whose projects range from the genre-busting Dead-eye kid, to the 'why even bother using words trying to explain it' Bingo the Birthday Clown, plus straight up gorey, spooky, and mind-bending fare in her regular 19 Nocturne Boulevard anthology of unusual stories.  And while Julie does many classics (such as HP Lovecraft's Rats in the Walls, just produced for this last Halloween), it's her original work that shows off the true range of her talents.  Expect the unexpected this week. Plus, news of a new radio drama adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and the publication of The Cleansed by Blackstone Audiobooks.  And the return of Captain Radio!  It's a pretty full 45 minutes.

Graphic - FunGraphix.com Theme music - Shane Lamb    Title: The New York Crimes (Mini-Series) Writer/Director/Producer: Kristen Felicetti Type: Comedy Genre:  Mystery Length: 15- to 18-minute episodes Rating: AD-PG13* (Bursts of course language unsuited for kiddies) Availability: Free to listen from thenycrimes.com WATCH NY CRIMES TRAILER @ Youtube Greetings, Audionauts! The Captain is back with a review of The New York Crimes, a comedy mystery mini-series from independent Big Apple writer/director/producer, Kristen Felicetti. Meet upper-middle class brothers Albert and Wallace Wren (portrayed by Rob Daurio and Mack Gelber), best described as the low-key Lenny and Squiggy of modern crime detection. Emotionally stalled in their twenties (maybe earlier), they debate what to do with themselves following the death of both parents’ in a violent auto accident a year earlier. [AUDIO CLIP] Albert’s sudden apparent kidnapping leads both to a fateful encounter in a squalid backwater bar with mysterious and reclusive, Norman Avery (played by Lew Gardner). Remarkably, Avery perceives potential in these emotional misfits and wants to hire them both … as detectives! [AUDIO CLIP] The pair first must “train” with severe method-actress Eva (portrayed by Michele Rosenthal) to acquire the crucial skills of lying convincingly and posing as others. Avery next reluctantly dispatches the fledgling dysfunctional duo to an even seedier night club operated by Max Shift (portrayed by Charles Reinhardt) discretely to investigate thefts from customers that occur during late night band sets. Subsequently, our pair of poster kids for arrested development actually manage to hit the streets and do some honest gum-shoeing, interrupted, though, by sudden joint urges to indulge deeply in the many temptations of the sordid world into which they’ve plunged; and to play video games. Eventually, while posing as Milly Vanilly knock-off instrumental noise rocksters at Max’s club, Albert has a deductive epiphany and immediately exposes the thief, leading to a wild car chase with Wally driving. [AUDIO CLIP] After unfortunately smunching into a parked Mercedes, losing their perp, Albert remains hot to press the pursuit. However, Wally implodes at the thought of nearly killing his brother in like manner to the deaths of both parents. He bails on the caper and promptly departs for Westchester. His decision proves, oh, so fateful for his brother. [BACKGROUND MUSIC – AVA LUNA “CLIPS”] Felicetti, a new face in independent audio theater, seeks to fuse old-time radio crime mystery elements with twenty something’s boredom. She envisions that the process of solving crimes just might lead her protagonists to resolve other apparently irresolveable life problems. While listeners might at first glance regard her characters as running the gamut from exaggerated to shallow, Felicetti strives for real-world contemporary characters and voices from the twenty-somethings primarily populating her tale. She almost exclusively recruited actors from among her peer acquaintances. Then, as recording progressed in the casual setting of an urban apartment, she encouraged them just to be themselves. Others from the big-city milieu may judge her relative success for themselves; I enjoyed hearing the characters emerge in living color as the actors explored their present state through Felicetti’s sometimes clever and often insightful scripts. I look forward to more of Felicetti’s Albert and Wally, and I believe so does she … Catch off-beat tongue-in-cheek mystery trenched in the Big Apple - listen to Kristen Felicetti’s 4-part mini-series, The New York Crimes, available online free to listen at thenycrimes.com. Also, check out the smooth multi-layered harmonies of Ava Luna, the Brooklyn indie band heard in the background and featured in The New York Crimes, by visiting their web site at http://avalunamusic.com. CaptainRadio.

This week The Truth returns, the remarkable (in the fullest sense of that word) audio drama podcast that seeks to reinvent the format for 21st century aesthetics. The brainchild of producer, sound designer, and writer Jonathan Mitchell, The Truth is trying many different things, but what it's best at is a wildly innovative approach to audio storytelling wherein a rough script is used to set up situations, and actors improvise dialogue to play out those situations. This storytelling method, combined with location-recordings, results in an invigorating, surprising kind of drama that can surprise, delight, or - as is the case in today's episode - terrify. Both stories take ordinary people and push them out of the realm of normalcy and into the outskirts - the place where things get weird. In "In Good Hands," two pranksters in New York City go beneath the surface of the city and discover another world in the tunnels. In "Do You Have a Minute for Equality?" a woman is put in a tight spot on a city street, and her efforts to support her cause will cost her dearly.

Part 6 of 6 of the Transcontinental Terror live streaming Halloween Horror Event. Featuring 19 Nocturne Boulevard (Seattle, Washington) with the HP Lovecraft classic "The Rats in the Walls" 19 Nocturne Boulevard, which began podcasting in October of 2008, is an anthology series with over 80 half hour episodes, two Mark Time Awards (“The Outpost” 2008, “The Rookie” 2009), and an Ogle Award (“Ghost of a Chance” 2011) under its belt. Written and produced by Julie Hoverson, 19 Nocturne Boulevard spans genres from comedy to horror, from science fiction to mystery, and from romance to dark social commentary. In addition to its flagship series, 19 Nocturne Boulevard, Wheeality Productions’ other shows include Bingo the Birthday Clown (gonzo fantasy), Fatal Girl (dark mature anime), and the Deadeye Kid (supernatural western). As the resident diva of 19 Nocturne, Julie takes pride in playing fairy godmother for a number of beginning audio drama groups (helping them improve their techniques and find resources like music and actors), teaching production one-on-one, involving new actors (particularly students) in her shows, as well as producing a blog on audio drama production techniques. This fosters a feeling of community and enthusiasm that comes through in every Wheeality Production.

Part 5 of 6 of the Transcontinental Terror live streaming Halloween Horror Event. Featuring Icebox Radio Theater (International Falls, Minnesota) with "All Hallow's Eve" The Icebox Radio Theater of International Falls, Minnesota, USA, has many faces and many voices. It is a community theater in a small town. It is a media arts organization with a global audience. It is dedicated to promoting and telling the stories of a very unique region. And it is dedicated to artistic growth. Most of all, the IBRT is dedicated to the idea that in the Internet Age, great art can be created anywhere and enjoyed by everyone. The IBRT has produced both live radio theater before paying audiences, and recorded ‘in studio’ in its home at the Backus Community Center in International Falls. It is award winning, most recently bringing home a Silver Ogle Award for best Fantasy or Horror audio in 2009 for last Halloween’s offering: “The Thing on the Ice.” It is an eclectic theater featuring stories of comedy, mystery, horror, science fiction, drama, and adventure, all with some tie to the region the theater calls home. The IBRT has a twice-monthly podcast, has been heard on radio stations from coast-to-coast, and this year is embarking on a membership campaign.

Part 4 of 6 of the Transcontinental Terror live streaming Halloween Horror Event. Featuring Chatterbox Audio Theater (Memphis, Tennessee) with "Master Zacharius" Part 1 and Part 2 Chatterbox Audio Theater is an audio production company based in Memphis, TN. Chatterbox favors simultaneous performances and manual sound effects, preferring to create their shows with as little post-production editing as possible. Chatterbox shows include adaptations of classic literature (including James Joyce, Herman Melville, Greek myths, and others), original stories (such as the 2007 Silver Ogle Award winner “The Dead Girl”), sketch comedy, thrillers, dramas, children’s stories, and more. Since launching in September of 2007, Chatterbox has posted some 60 shows to its website, www.chatterboxtheater.org. All of Chatterbox’s productions (including recordings of previous years’ Halloween broadcasts) are available through its website at no charge. You may also subscribe to the group’s podcast on iTunes.

Part 3 of 6 of the Transcontinental Terror live streaming Halloween Horror Event. Featuring FinalRune Productions (Portland, Maine) and Aural Stage Studios (Buffalo, NY) with Dark Passenger and Intensive Care Passenger and Intensive Care FinalRune Productions is dedicated to producing compelling original audio drama.  Since their creation in 2006, FinalRune has released over a dozen original works, including the Ogle-Award winning “Waiting for a Window,” the pilot episode of “Open Season” by Archer Mayor (featured in The Wall Street Journal), and the cautionary tale “The Troll of Stony Brook.” FinalRune’s work is recorded on-location, using techniques similar to independent filmmaking for an immersive and realistic aural experience. Downloads of plays, production photographs, and articles on the craft are available on FinalRune’s website, http://www.finalrune.com. Aural Stage Studios is a team of audio designers, producers and engineers experienced in all aspects of audio, including theatre sound design, audio post-production, sound effect recording and design, voice recording, Foley and studio recording. Aural Stage Studios showcases writers and performing artists in an inexpensive and easily distributable medium with potential for world wide exposure. Aural Stage Studios is responsible for the Ogle Award winning 2011 co-production of “Intensive Care” with FinalRune Productions, as well as their original series, Dialed In and 1918. Aural Stage Studio’s lead sound designer, Matthew Boudreau, is also principle sound designer behind FinalRune’s epic apocalyptic podcast series, The Cleansed.

Part 2 of 6 of the Transcontinental Terror live streaming Halloween Horror Event. Featuring Electric Vicuna (Halifax, Nova Scotia) with "Coach #6" and "One by One" Electric Vicuña was established in 2009 to meet the growing demand for high profile radio drama, audio cinema, voice acting, and books on tape. EV is the parent organization that provides the very best in modern audio drama from the weekly radio broadcast and popular podcast The Sonic Society. Beginning with a strong base in the three pillars of creative and accessible content, high-quality recordings, sound effects and music, and an emphasis on solid business practices, Electric Vicuña Productions looks to partner with radio stations, podcasts, and audio companies to bring to market the very best of audio stories. With many projects in development and mature broadcast partners built upon the experience of the founders, and years in the podcasting/broadcasting world through its early incarnations as Sonic Cinema and the Sonic Society, Electric Vicuña has become a hub to showcase quality, original audio and spoken word content.

Part 1 of 6 of the Transcontinental Terror live streaming Halloween Horror Event. Featuring Wireless Theatre Company (London, England) with "The Maiden without Hands" and "The Cask of Amontillado" The award-winning Wireless Theatre Company launched in 2007 and quickly established itself as one of the most well-respected audio companies on the internet, producing allfree, original audio drama, comedy, stories, poems, sketches and more for download to iPods. WTC have worked with hundreds of people in four years, including much-loved radio performers and writers such as Prunella Scales, Timothy West, Nicholas Parsons (Patron), Julian Glover, Richard O’Brien and Ray Galton. WTC realizes one new production a month, as well as several live audio recordings a year. WTC also creates audio horror productions with www.3Dhorrorfi.com using binarual recording techniques for 3D sound. Visit www.wirelesstheatrecompany.co.uk for free audio productions.

This week on the show we feature the work of Wireless Theatre Company, in their cheeky play about the drama behind radio drama creation We Are the BBC (and a nod out to its predecessor, We are Not the BBC). Rob Sterling Davies is on the crest of a wave: a celebrated scriptwriter, actor, TV personality, the new doyen of Just a Minute, and apparently, Stephen Fry's new best friend (and yes, this play does star Stephen Fry himself, as... Stephen Fry!). But all isn't quite as it seems, and when Stephen discovers that Rob's BAFTA-winning script was stolen, he undertakes to expose Rob for the fraud he is. Written by Susan Casanove, who also stars as Bulah Clack. This is the second in a series of three comedy-dramas which document the rise to fame of a deeply immoral, narcissistic sociopath, played brilliantly by Adam Hall, who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Also featuring an interview with Washingtoon Audio Theater by the returned Captain Radio!