Fresh from Ireland, a cool new video from a new show, ‘THE BEE-LOUD GLADE: A Living Anthology of Contemporary Irish Poetry,’ with music by Roger Gregg & Crazy Dog Audio Theatre.

Meanwhile, I solicited some pretty candid comments from Roger about the news regarding BBC radio drama:

Behind all this is the well-entrenched paradigm which has been embraced since the year dot over here.

Namely that ‘Radio Drama’ is Theatre on the radio and that ‘theatre’ must always come in the form of ‘plays’.

‘Plays’ are presented in long formats, 90 minutes, an hour, 45 minutes.

Half hour things are ‘Light Entertainment’ or half-hour or less slot ‘Serials’ such as the Archers [which I think is around the 15 minute mark]. … The Radio Networks do the research and time and time again it comes back to them that relatively NO ONE listens to the long-form ‘drama’ – go over half an hour and the numbers go down…down…after 45 minutes down…down…over that .. down …down… gone.

But since ‘Theatre’ and ‘Drama’ MUST always in their paradigm be about presenting ‘Plays’ they are stuck.

I don’t know how many times I’ve banged the drum for SHORT slots citing the wonderful success Dirk Maggs achieved with
so much of his BBC Radio 2 adventure series. Daily in short segments, an omnibus on the weekends and if and when a CD is released or it’s put up on the internet, then you can connect all the daily segments together with discrete track i.d.s between each segment for easy cueing. I have said this in writing to RTE and Radio 2 as well as suggested in writing to a couple of the independent stations,
but NO ONE is interested.

The emprical marketing and listening pattern research is there. Time and time again the statistics and conclusions therefrom are plain to see. Station Programmers meticulously study this data and have adapted old and created new highly successful programming and
styles and modes of presentation.

YET the bastion of ‘Radio Drama’ remains impervious to this. This is one reason why they do themselves no favours and are often regarded as the hindbound nuisance in stations compelled to produce drama.

Youch! Hard truths but worth meditating on. I know that plenty of people listen to long-form drama – on demand – but on broadcast radio it’s a whole different beast.

Roger’s comments bring Tom Lopez’s work on 2 Minute Film Noir, indeed, his work with Ruby and Jack Flanders being released as ongoing serialized shorts. In an environment where attention spans are short and time is precious, less is more.

This week, a tale of lascivious delight and ghosts of the deep below from Crazy Dog Audio Theatre. The tale is Demons of the Deep, from the collection Diabolic Playhouse.

Roger calls it:

A tempestuous black comedy of entangled relationships set against the hunt for a mysterious sea creature. A multi-levelled tale, listeners might also tap into the scores of references to the great symbolist ‘sea creature’ classics: Moby Dick, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, The Tempest and the Leviathan as depicted in the Old Testament.

And gosh, it’s a lot of fun to listen to. See these cool production photos to see how much fun the cast had, too.

Enjoy, “Demons of the Deep.”

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Radio Drama Revival – Episode 166

Well, the dust is not yet settled on Halloween and the eeriness seeps into this month… Starting with the original “Ghost Behind the Black Door,” to contrast the same tale we re-told in my 2009 Halloween Live Radio Drama.

So, the story? A couple moves from the city to a remote mansion in Ireland, where every spooky story cliche is abused in this hilariously ghoulish half hour. From the Crazy Dog Live collection.

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Radio Drama Revival – Episode 147

A mega-episode here today to celebrate the NATF workshop down in West Plains, Missouri, and then moving on to our focus on this year’s Ogle and Mark Time winners.

Lance Axt, man of many hats, introduces us to several personalities at NATF and gives us flavor of the workshop. We look into the #NATF feed that’s going out on Twitter. And hey! If you’re reading this on June 26, 2009, you can catch the live NATF show on their live stream. Click here to tune in at 8:30 EDT.

Following that up is Roger Gregg’s “The Return of the Bogman Mummy,” produced in tandem with the Gaiety School of Acting. It won the Silver Mark Time Award this year, and as far as I know, Radio Drama Revival is the only place to find it right now!

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Radio Drama Revival – Episode 128

Next week: an encore presentation of Waiting for a Window and then my interviews with Great Northern Audio Theater guys, Brian Price and Jerry Stearns.

Hot off the presses from Ireland I’ve gotten word that Roger Gregg’s shockingly original adaptation of Gerry Murphy’s poetry will be returning the stage in Cork, Ireland. Here’s what the jacket has to say:

All the colourful personas that infamously stalk through Murphy’s satirical writing: from his vicious portraits of demented despots and torturers, to his passionate erotic encounters, to his highly personal confessions on love and loss, will come to life in an evening of riotous musical entertainment!

It may be a bit of a swim for most of us to get there, but if you happen to be across the pond already, don’t miss the show, running June 23-June 27, 2009 at the Everyman Palace Theatre in Cork, Ireland. Shows kick off at 8pm.

Possibly more exciting, at least for us distant audio listeners, is a fresh CD that Roger’s pressed from the last time the show was performed… Including some great bonus tracks. I had the pleasure to listen to the pre-release copy and the material’s taken on an even greater sheen since then.

Here’s a taste of it, with a song that may sound oh-so-vaguely familiar:

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I assume that the CD will be available on ZBS, as have previous Crazy Dog CDs. I’ll also may an effort to continue posting excerpts, as this is excellent stuff not to be missed.

Just in case you thought poetry was the realm of dust-covered English professors, think again. And don’t miss the clips of the Gerry Murphy Poetry show available on YouTube.

Ahh, ancient Greece. Hot nymphs, raging orgies, much wine, song, and occasional transformations into a goat. All well and good, right?

Well things are more wacky than ever in the sizzling and scandalous interpretation of the myth of Orpheus done by Roger Gregg, The Stuff of Myth.

This great production won a Gold Ogle in 2007 and has gotten rave reviews as a stage play. Now hear what the buzz is all about in the first bonus episode… and stay tuned the rest of the month for more!

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Radio Drama Revival Bonus Episode – Stuff of Myth 1 of 4