Airs Thursdays, 1-1:30PM EST on Portland, Maine's community radio station WMPG. Produced by Frederick Greenhalgh of FinalRune Productions.
Great Northern Audio Theater’s Brian Price is a producer and writer with a long list of audiography over more than ten years, from the Midwest Theatre Workshop and the Iowa Radio Project to the amazing comedies GNAT does for the Mark-Time Sci-fi awards at the CONvergence science-fiction convention. We chat with him this week about the work he does, and the amazing effect of sound.
I’ve grown a big fan of the Lit Between the Ears blog written by William Spear of Two Plus Plus Productions. He continually has a high level of discussion about audio work, both the ars poetica and the cultural/economic/political climate that affects how our work is received by the outside world. His “Three Questions” series has interviewed a huge range of voices of authority on radio drama, and I’m happy to say that I’ll be the next!
Make sure you take a look at the Three Questions Interview that’ll be up March 20.
Well, looks like I’m on a roll this evening. I had the great pleasure of chatting with Jack Hosley, AKA “The Wander Wolf” from WanderRadio this afternoon and learning all about how he got into the niche podcasting market and the emerging media writers and actors he works with. Time allowed for a special presentation of “High Moon” by Great Northern Audio Theatre. Enjoy!
It’s very rare that you have anything resembling stardom in radio, and Ira Glass from This American Life is one of that select number. His nationally syndicated, genre-busting series of edgy stories from the ranks of ordinary Americans has transcended the definition of public radio, and the following is strong enough for there to be a kids movie based on one story premise and a new Showtime series adapting the show into television. The promotional tour, “What I Learned from Television,” came as close as Boston and this audio enthusiast was not going to miss it.
So how do you add video to an audio endeavor without destroying it? This was pretty much at the heart of the live show and an issue Ira still obviously struggles with, though his clear enthuasism for his work and this experiment is contagious. The event itself took place in Boston’s Opera House, a beautiful, ornately adorned building with echoes of European cathedrals and classical theaters — a setting more “high art” than edgy. Boston’s literati was in full force, with a collegiate crowd sporting Harvard blazers, gray-haired poetry professors, 20-something socialites, and a stunning variety of well dressed people in between.
The format of the live show was the same as any of Ira’s regular shows, with a special “act” exclusively for us at the live show. The theme of the night, “What I Learned from Television,” was supported by a cast of TAL regulars, including Sarah Vowell, Jonathan Goldstein, and Dan Savage.
Sarah Vowell started by deconstructing the use of pilgrims and Thanksgiving in television. While her nasally voice might turn off some, it’s unique hers and she delivers her writing with a bone dry wit that is electrifying, grim and terrible. Who knew that there was a short-lived series that made fun of the whole premise of Thanksgiving? We’ve all seen the Indians and turkeys, but maybe not thought too hard about this societal construct. There followed a gut-laughing treatise of the awkward friendship of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, and a closing narrative of the portrayals of homo and heterosexual relationships on the boob tube. All readers were solid, though not the back-and-forth explorational interviews that make the radio show so compelling.
Between acts Ira stopped in for some editorializing and commentary on the television program. He was neither embarassed to admit his love for the OC or his esteem for modern television writing. Quite honestly, this is what we came for, and Ira delivered with class, wit, and measured levels of self-deprecating humor. The Showtime show looks great, and the candid conversation between Glass and director Chris Wilcha revealed some interesting perspectives on one of my favorite subjects, the artistic difference of audio and video+audio. I don’t really want to give anything away, but the show has a slight surrealist edge that lends itself well to the unbearably real stories This American Life is so famous for (check out the trailer for a taste).
Tied together with a live band (Mates of State) that fit the mood appropriately, “What I Learned from Television” was a great way to spend an evening with ample parts humor, artistic discussion, and social commentary. Though I still don’t own a TV, nor would I ever pay for cable, I’m excited for the Showtime efforts and hope the show makes it onto YouTube!
Mucho thanks to Craig Wichman, whose backup recording saves the great discussion aforementioned. Enjoy!
Writer/producer Craig Wichman and writer/director Jay Stern come from backgrounds in television, film, and stage (Craig stars in an indie movie directed by Jay, The Changeling). In fact, they feel that independent audio theater has a lot to do with indie movies. That is, technology has opened up the door for a huge amount of new work, but not everyone with a mic in their hands is a great artist. Crudely quoting Craig, “You can’t just record a movie over the weekend and post it on YouTube and be a filmmaker. It’s the same thing with audio theater. You need a good script, trained actors and a director who knows what he’s doing.”
Craig and Jay chat about the process of choosing a script to run with and the long process of writing and revising, where they work as a team bouncing ideas off of each other and making edits. Their choice of stories tends to lay towards classics — The Merchant of Venice, Frankenstein, The Speckled Band and other Holmes stories — though they stressed that they focus on taking the classic story and bringing it to life for a modern audience (Good Friday, 1865, incidentally, was an original). “Sometimes you’ll get an actor, and as soon as they see a Shakespeare script, they’ll [begin Shakespeare voice] talk in their Shakespeare voice [/end Shakespeare voice]. We don’t want that,” Jay said, “We want timelessness.”
Indeed. In the hands of other, less passionate writers, the story of Lincoln’s last moments could’ve been a stale, plodding historical narrative. Instead, it is told almost exclusively without narration, by a startling cast, and transports us to a living, breathing history, not a cold mausoleum. Even with the inescapable ending, we ride along the story with breathless anticipation.
As far as audio drama’s future? They hope that more outlets for this work will boost its popularity, especially as those who might not be intentional listeners may become converts if they hear it. While they felt it’s a “sin” that there’s no radio drama being sponsored on a national level by National Public Radio (where do we even begin with that one?) there is hope in podcasts, small community stations, and the growing audiobook crowd.
I look forward to their future efforts, which may be a comedy! Whatever story they choose with access to a great pool of talent, excellent production capability, and a true sense of the capabilities of audio, I’m sure their work will continue to delight the imagination.
