Today we feature two last bits – “Collector’s Fever” by Roger Zelazny and “And Miles to Go before I Sleep” by William F. Nolan.

Followed by an interview with Yuri himself where we talk about his more recent work in noir audio drama, an exciting new project featuring Zorro, and reflections on 40 years in audio.

Enjoy!

Download audio file (rdr-podcast178.mp3)
Download Radio Drama Revival – Episode 178

This week we wrap up our month-long celebration of the poet laureate of radio, Norman Corwin, who celebrated his centennial this month.

We tie together a month of great programming with a documentary by the BBC that lets Norman tell us the story of a life in radio – giving us a taste of what it was like to be producing great radio in the greatest era for the greatest in the world… and what magic is it all!

Download audio file (rdr-podcast175.mp3)
Download Radio Drama Revival – Episode 175 (MP3)

Hear about the background of the film, what it was like making it, and of course, some delicious tidbits about the golden age of radio!

Do check out James Kicklighter’s site for more information about Theater of the Mind and his projects, and recall our conversation with him a few months ago about turning memories of radio into film!

Following the conclusion of this production is an interview with Emily Agnew, director of both the stage and radio version of the show, with Mokita Grit productions.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast140.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 140

Erik started in the early days of KPFA with the Black Mass series, which is now widely circulated on the ‘net. However, that was only the roughest start of his career – he went on to produce for many more years with a variety of groups, including the founding of Bay Area Radio Drama, and the Horspiel-America project.

Chris Dueker has covered him in the Malleus series, talking about the Horspiel-America project and reviewing a work of Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

I had the opportunity to talk to Erik about four decades of radio drama in the San Francisco Bay Area, including early field recording pieces with Randy Thom and many more works produced with sound designed Jim McKee, who also joined us on the phone.

With no further ado, let’s get into the work of Erik Bauersfeld.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast134.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival – Episode 134

But before we get to all that, we spook you again with the dramatization of Joe’s story “God of the Razor” by our friends at The Grist Mill.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast133.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 133

Download audio file (rdr-bonus-joe-lansdale.mp3)
Bonus: Standalone Interview, Joe R. Lansdale

P.S. The phrase “Halloween in July” is snagged from a killer short story by Kevin Anderson. Kevin’s work frequently appears on two of my favorite podcasts, the Drabblecast and the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine. He also has his own blog and runs the audio market list for writers seeking audio publication.

Part 2 of my interview with Magic Bullet producer / writer / audio dramatist Alan Stevens picks up where we left off and hits the following topics: knowing when to end stories, the creative potential and individual fulfillment to be had in writing with licensed properties, why Avon and Iago are psychopathic bastards (or are they the same psychopathic bastard?), and of course, Faustian bargains. As in part 1 of this interview, audio clips from Kaldor City are embedded throughout. Additional sound clips from Magic Bullet’s The True History of Faction Paradox audio serial can be found in my overview of that series here.  To go directly to Magic Bullet’s website, click their logo above.

Stevens is a unique voice in the field, and whether you agree with his positions or not, you can’t fault the dedication, quality, or intelligence behind his work. Whether you consider yourself a “genre fan” or “above such things”, if you value good audio drama then you need to read this interview.

CD: So at this point you don’t know what’s up next for Magic Bullet after Faction Paradox concludes?

AS: No idea at all. There might be something else, but, then again, there might not. There might be a huge gap and then something. You get that with my stuff – we did Coming to Dust and The Ship of a Billion Years, followed by this huge gap, and then suddenly we appeared again with Body Politic, Words from Nine Divinities and Ozymandias. Part of the reason for this was that I wasn’t sure how well Faction Paradox was going to sell, and the amount of sales affects the amount of money you have to spend on the series. Faction didn’t sell as well as Kaldor City initially, but then it picked up a lot, and it now sells very well. Sales are good and people like it. However, I still don’t believe you should carry on with a series beyond its natural life, just because the sales are good. I just don’t see the point of going through the motions and carrying on with something, if you think the story’s been told. Does that make sense?

CD: It makes perfect sense. I’ve often had the same feeling, that it’s a shame when stories are exhausted and carried on for pure profit beyond their natural lifespan. So it’s refreshing to hear you say that.

AS: Good. There are TV shows out there that should have ended three years ago, but are still going because the profit margins are good.

CD: I did want to ask about that – in terms of commercial audio drama production (outside of the BBC) Britain’s evolved a peculiar culture distinct from the United States and Germany. In the US, there’s original work, original serials, adaptations of novels and things like that, in Germany there’s a lot of children’s drama and work based on older pulp novels and some original serials, whereas in Britain commercial audio drama seems to be largely defined mostly by spin-offs from mostly defunct British television science fiction. I was wondering, since you’re one of the forces that has put that forward, why do you think the British market has evolved with that emphasis?

AS: In Britain the last drama to have an audience bigger than television on radio was Journey into Space in 1955. When television came along, basically, and audience stopped listening to audio drama and started watching television. I think the reason why Big Finish appeared was because Doctor Who had been off the air for seventeen years and people missed it, and probably many of them had, like me, tape-recorded Doctor Who stories off the television when they were kids, so they were primed for audio. Of course, I’m sure you know that various Doctor Who stories were stupidly wiped by the BBC, and only exist as audios now because they were tape-recorded on first broadcast by fans. And so this culture within fandom for audio developed.

Personally, I wouldn’t produce anything that isn’t in some way connected to an established series, because without a huge advertising budget, I can’t make a big enough impact on people to buy it.  Shall I buy something l know, like Doctor Who or Blake’s 7, or shall I buy something I’ve never heard of before? The fact is that the audio market is mainly aimed at fandoms, as it’s mainly fandoms who are buying audio stuff. And there’s not a lot of ‘original drama,’ if, indeed, there is such a thing, being made because people just won’t buy it. I know people who have produced their own stand alone dramas, and they have generally failed to sell any more than two hundred copies. You might take a chance on buying a film you’ve never seen before, but with audio drama, there’s this barrier now, because people think in TV terms and not radio terms. As for mainstream America, there appears to be virtually no market at all for radio plays.

CD: It’s a small market.

AS: We have a history of radio plays in Britain, but perhaps there wasn’t one in America. Germany, perhaps there was a strong history – I don’t know how well stuff in Germany sells -

CD: It sells pretty well, apparently.

AS: If it’s successful as a new series in its own right, then perhaps there’s a stronger bias toward radio than there is in Britain and certainly in America.

CD: Well, there’s a different audio drama pop culture history to all three countries. In the USA it’s currently mostly original stuff, but it’s probably mostly original stuff that doesn’t sell very well, as you were saying. It’s mostly just the hard-core audio drama fans -

AS: I’ve had people approach me saying I’ve got this great idea for a series – in fact, there’s a friend of mine who I worked with on a series called The Unworthy about a motorcycle gang who were actually the original Knights of the Round Table. It was this black, anarchic comedy, and we even wrote a script. But I’d never produce it as a direct-to-CD product, because I just don’t think it would sell. Not that I think it isn’t any good; I think it’s brilliant. But it hasn’t got that connection there. There are certain stories and characters within Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 that are highly regarded, that people are willing to buy into. But an audio series of Star Cops – would that sell? I don’t know. It hasn’t been on British TV for about twenty years. You have to be very careful choosing what you do, because it can really cost you if it fails, because audio drama is so very expensive.

CD: Especially, I think, to do it on the level that you do.

AS: If you’re going to do something, you’ve got to do it to the best of your ability. I’ve known some producers who have said, I want this out by Christmas, and they’ve rushed to hit that deadline. I think that’s just crazy. At the end of the day, I want to be proud of what I’ve done and not feel we compromised it because we had to get it out for Christmas.

CD: I think that standard is apparent in your productions.

AS: Thank you.

Download audio file (13_Kaldor_City_Clip_8.mp3)

(Robot V23 “talks” to the Chief Fixer in this surreal clip from Kaldor City Story Six: Storm Mine.)

CD: Absolutely. You wrapped up Kaldor City on a metaphysical note. Storm Mine was almost dreamlike, and seemed to appeal to an almost subconscious understanding of the characters rather than the more linear story prior to it. Faction Paradox is teeming with ideas, most of them about time. And yet, in terms of narrative structure the series is actually pretty linear. It mainly follows these two heroines who jump around in time, but once they’re set in their new time zone, they basically progress from start to finish. If there’s one disappointment I would have with the series thus far, it’s that it would be fascinating to hear what a “weapon that can rewrite history” sounds like. Narratively, sonically – these are things Lawrence Miles could surely write, and Alistair Lock could surely realize in sound – they have the skills to do that. There’s a way in which the more advanced ideas about time are never incorporated into the narrative structure – they’re more like trappings or context for the more straightforward drama that plays out.

AS: I can’t really comment, because a lot of the things you’re pointing out here are addressed in the last two episodes.

CD: I’m looking forward to them.

Do you personally have any ambitions to do your own original work in any medium, or do you feel soul-satisfied in pushing these established properties further, I think, than they’ve ever been? This is something I’ve been thinking about over the years, because more and more I’ve come to recognize that a lot of the people who work on established properties are genuine talents. It certainly seems that there are a lot of people feeling very fulfilled doing great work within pre-established universes. Is that the case for you, or do you have the urge to birth a completely original Alan Stevens world?

AS: Kaldor City has the surface elements of The Robots of Death and Blake’s 7, but there’s a lot of other stuff going on in there. New characters, new takes on older characters as they face different situations. Kaldor City was something more than a pastiche of old glories, it was trying to do something different. It was a Magic Bullet – it had a surface coating of Blake’s 7 and The Robots of Death, but the core of it was something else. If I had just done a series without the Blake’s 7 and Doctor Who trappings, then no-one would have bought it. But working within that coating allowed me to say a lot of things and do a lot of things that I wanted to say and do.

You have to sell some CDs or you’re not going to be able to fund the project. If you’re going to do a six-part series, you effectively have to ensure it sells, because it costs thousands and thousands of pounds to produce. If Coming to Dust had just sold two hundred copies there wouldn’t have been any more Faction Paradox CDs after that one, because the finance wouldn’t have been there to do it. So it has to sell.

CD: Between that statement and the work that you’ve done you’ve provided the most compelling argument I’m aware of in the audio drama field for the vitality of working creatively within that coating, as you describe it. On the other hand, I think you would agree that what you do is quite different from taking the safest route: producing work as close as possible to what came before. To really emulate the original shows and their plot lines to the point where you could slot them into a preceding TV season. I’ve never watched Blake’s 7 so I can’t speak to that. But my impression of what you do is that you always push these concepts and characters into new territory, and you inject a literate, intellectual component that isn’t always there in the original source material.

AS: I’m not sure how true that is. Chris Boucher once told me that anyone who tells you they’ve come up with a completely original idea is either a liar, or insane, and probably both. If you look at an episode of anything, you can crack it back to something else. And if you forensically take most stories apart, you can often find some interesting ideas within them. They may not have been consciously put in by the author, but they’re there, and part of the process of analyzing a story is to find those elements and bring them out.

Also, it’s a case of seeing what a writer’s done, how the audience reacted to it, and working with that. For example, one of the things that annoyed the hell out of me concerning Blake’s 7 was the treatment of Avon by certain fans. Yes, there was this setup within the series where the audience frequently didn’t know whether he was doing something for selfish, or for altruistic reasons, but generally, and Paul Darrow, the guy who played him, says this, Avon was a bastard. In fact such a bastard, he shot and killed Blake, the show’s title character. Even the programme’s producers have described Avon as a psycho. And yet, often you’d find articles by people trying to justify his more extreme acts. “Oh well, he may have killed Blake, but Blake should have explained himself more clearly.” So when Iago appeared, also played by Paul Darrow, I didn’t want to fall into the same trap, and so really tried to push the character as far as I could, to make his actions appear shocking. There’s a scene in Hidden Persuaders where Iago tells Blayes that he can get her out of this dangerous situation, but first the hostages will have to be dealt with, as they can identify who she is. He then goes over and shoots them. And they are terrified, and he’s clearly getting a kick out of it.

Download audio file (Kaldor_Clip_9.mp3)

Now, you can understand that sort of behaviour, but you can’t excuse it. Some people say, “I don’t believe Iago is Avon, because Avon wouldn’t do things like that.” Well, I don’t care whether you believe he’s Avon or not, but what I certainly don’t want you doing is looking for excuses to justify murderous and sociopathic behaviour. So when you’re writing, you’re thinking “What did the writers/producers originally intend, where, if at all, did it go wrong, what was the audience reaction, and, if it did go wrong, how can I avoid falling into a similar pit?”

Another idea I like very much is having an authority figure come along and say, “this and that has happened”, where, in fact, no such thing has happened at all. In Occam’s Razor, Carnell comes up with a self serving motivation to explain the Firstmaster killings, but in reality, nobody really knows why Iago went off and killed all those people. And it’s the same for the Shakespearean Iago, why the hell did he behave that way? There are a number of motivations assigned to him in Othello, and he even assigns some to himself, but we don’t really know why he did what he did. Maybe the character didn’t even know himself.

Download audio file (Kaldor_City_Clip_10.mp3)

(Iago tests the limits of Landerchild’s grasp of reality in this philosophical clip from The Prisoner, a short Kaldor City play included on MJTV’s The Actor Speaks 4: Paul Darrow.)

People are very susceptible to being told what to think by authority figures, and that such and such is the current state of affairs, where in fact the real situation is most probably completely different. For instance, I’ve read a number of reviews of Taren Capel, where it’s been stated that, “in this episode Iago discovered that the Tarenists were trying to get hold of a special trigger phrase to activate the killer robots”. But in actual fact, Iago made that up. The trigger phrase existed, but the Tarenists didn’t know anything about it. Iago’s primary intention was to discredit Carnell and get him killed, and he was willing to say anything to achieve that. And yet, because Iago is an ‘authority figure,’ and he has a deep voice and he says all of this, and Uvanov, another ‘authority figure,’ believes him, people think, “well, then it must be true”. But I don’t think it’s true. In fact, I know it isn’t true. I bloody wrote it!

So in Kaldor City there are competing narratives and everything is subverted. A lot of the things you are told are completely wrong. Some of the things Carnell said were lies. And Iago by definition is a liar. Paullus was deluded, and Uvanov was a paranoid, who had various ideas and conspiracies in his mind that were just plain fantasy. They were the architects of their own destruction, because they failed to comprehend what was going on around them, preferring instead to just carry on fighting their own personal and petty little wars. So as with the real world, in Kaldor City we have people who are deluded, people who are fantasists, people who are just plain liars, and people who, for their own various reasons, want to believe them.

CD: Oh, absolutely. The need to believe invented premises, I feel, has been the American story under Bush.

AS: There was an unfortunate coincidence, when Occam’s Razor came out; it had been recorded in 2000, but was released in early September 2001, and the first review I read of it tied 9/11 to a scene where a flyer crashed into a building. There was no way I knew that was going to happen – it was written perhaps seventeen or eighteen months before those events took place. And yet, because I was fishing in the same pool, because we were dealing with terrorism and fanaticism, the story strangely started to mirror things that were happening in real life. It’s weird that, isn’t it? If you think like a terrorist … I think Alan Moore was exploring this in V for Vendetta, when he had this guy, who was trying to get into the mindset of V, taking the same drugs V had been forced to take, and wandering around the same camp where V had been experimented on, so he would start to think like him, and would perhaps know what he was going to do next. It was quite shocking when I realized, “Good grief, we are fishing in the same pool as Bin Laden.”

As for George Bush, there are again parallels with Kaldor City in that people have plans, but these plans usually go horribly wrong. I’m sure in Bush’s head there were a number of very good reasons for invading Iraq, but he’s never going to tell us what they were and the result was a terrible disaster. In Kaldor City, Uvanov would have a plan, and Carnell would have a plan, and Landerchild would have a plan, and in fact everyone would have a plan, and you don’t even know what all the plans were, and then they’d all go horribly wrong. So what you ended up with was a mass of mistakes and errors caused through stupidity and misunderstanding, with no one knowing what the hell was going to happen next. And that’s what life is. Life’s frequently like that for me. I think: “What the hell was that about? Why did I do that?”

Download audio file (Kaldor_City_Clip_11.mp3)

(Uvanov watches his plans, power, and understanding go up in smoke as the ineluctably calm Carnell pursues a cryptic game of chess in this clip from Kaldor City Story Four: Taren Capel.)

CD: (Laughs) That sounds like a sane approach to life… Are there other audio dramatists working today that you particularly admire?

AS: I think Rob Shearman is a very good writer. I think he’s an excellent writer.

CD: I would agree with that.

AS: And Daniel O’Mahony of course, and Jim Smith, and there are also several others I could name. Paul Dale Smith is a very clever chap, and Lawrence Miles is an excellent writer as well. I don’t often agree with Lawrence Miles, I’ve had several arguments with him, but never over his scripts.

CD: You’ve touched on this in your comments already, but could you sum up the state of your business?

AS: I’ve been told by other audio producers that there is a limited shelf life to their products. They produce a story, it comes out, and then after a few months it stops selling and they never sell any more. But I’ve never had that with Kaldor City, or Faction Paradox. They’ve sold solidly. Occam’s Razor came out in 2001 and I’m still selling it.

CD: Is that due to advertising or word of mouth?

AS: It must be word of mouth. Since Doctor Who’s come back it’s very difficult to get advertising anywhere in the Doctor Who media. They’re too busy reviewing the latest Cyberman-Voice-Changer-Helmet to find room for anything else. But it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I think the CDs sells because they’re good, and people recognize that. I’ve certainly been sent some lovely emails over the years, which is all very encouraging. I was expecting a drop in sales when Doctor Who came back on TV, but as Kaldor City and Faction Paradox are clearly spin-offs, then I suppose you have to be in a spin-off frame of mind anyway to buy them, so the return of Doctor Who hasn’t knocked our sales at all. They’ve all sold very well. In fact sales have gone up. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s my Faustian pact. I have this pact with Satan. He’s the one working on my sales promotion at the moment.

CD: I hope you made your Faustian pact in the tradition of Goethe rather than Marlowe. You know he gets off the hook in Goethe’s version?

AS: That’s right. He gets off the hook through the love of a good woman. I prefer bad women, myself. That’s probably why I’m doing Faction Paradox.

CD: Alan, thanks for talking with me today.

AS: A pleasure.

But first, a visit to a small and tainted town in Maine, where the Hayward Sanitarium houses the most strange inhabitants. What’s wrong with their patients and why do they like to go out at night?

Download audio file (rdr-podcast126.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival Episode 126 – Rich Fish Talks NATF, Hayward Sanitarium Episode 2

Cool Links:

In a stunning coincedence, Georgia Southern has just posteda trailer for the radio drama documentary Theater of the Mind to YouTube. Our guest today, Rich Fish, talks about the weirdness of talking about radio in video!

I got a chance to screen the video and think it’s great… especially knowing the kind of time frame they had to put this thing together in. ?More to come on that.

Also, don’t miss Rich’s upcoming live broadcast on WFHB (THIS Saturday, June 13, ?at 8PM EST)… And you can listen to many of his previous shows on the WFHB archives.

Today I present part one of the Malleus interview with Alan Stevens of Magic Bullet, audio dramatist, writer, and producer of the Kaldor City and The True History of Faction Paradox audio drama serials. In this installment, Stevens discusses what drew him to audio drama and how Magic Bullet came to be, why he recast the Faction Paradox audio dramas, and what makes sound designer Alistair Lock a genius. Alan has an engaging wit and an interesting approach, and the article is embedded with sound clips from both the Kaldor City and The True History of Faction Paradox serials that illustrate why Magic Bullet is a force to be reckoned with in the British audio drama scene. Don’t pass this one by. 

(You can go directly to Magic Bullet’s website by clicking on their logo above. Further sound clips from The True History of Faction Paradox can be found in my overview of the series here. Part 2 of the interview can be found here.)

CD: How did Magic Bullet get started?

AS: It got started because I had an idea for an audio series loosely based on a film called Yojimbo. It was by Akira Kurosawa, and it was about this Samurai who had gone into a town and had set about playing two powerful families off against one another as a way to make a lot of money. It was remade by Sergio Leone into a Western called A Fistful of Dollars, with Clint Eastwood, and again into Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis but this time set in the 1930′s. And I thought, it worked as a Japanese samurai medieval film and it worked as a cowboy film and as a 30′s gangster flick, so I had this idea of an unnamed character, probably played by Paul Darrow, coming into a town or city and playing one side off against another. I had already done some not-for-profit Blake’s 7 audios, a drama-documentary called Travis: The Final Act and two plays, The Mark of Kane, and The Logic of Empire, with sound designer Alistair Lock, and Logic had starred Paul Darrow as Avon, so you can see the connections coming together; in fact a lot of the people who later appeared in Kaldor City originally worked with me on those audios.

Download audio file (kaldor_clip_1.mp3)

(Avon sets course for a fateful rendezvous with Blake in this excerpt from The Logic of Empire.)

At the same time that I was thinking about this, Chris Boucher released a Doctor Who book called Corpse Marker, which, as well as being a sequel to his 1977 Doctor Who story The Robots of Death, was also a Blake’s 7 / Doctor Who crossover, because Carnell from Blake’s 7 appeared in Kaldor City, where the story was set. So I called up Chris Boucher, and I said to him, would you be interested in doing a (audio drama) CD series called Kaldor City? And he said, “What’s your idea?” And I told him about the Yojimbo scenario, and he said “You go away and write a script, and if I like it we’ll proceed from there.”

Also at this time, Jim Smith had held a drunken conversation with Paul Ebbs from BBV about the possibility of doing an audio series with them, and he seemed to think BBV would be willing to do it, so I went away and wrote this script with Jim and came back to Chris, and he liked the script. But when we got back to BBV with the script and the cast we wanted, they weren’t too interested; I think they thought it would be too expensive. Big Finish then showed some interest, but eventually I thought, “why don’t I just do it myself?” So I set up my own company called Magic Bullet. The name Magic Bullet came about because my Blake’s 7 audios used to feature a variation of the Season 4 Blake’s 7 logo, which is a crosshairs, on the spines.

CD: So you weren’t just trying to profit from an American tragedy, then? (laughs)

AS: Well, as Kaldor City’s all about conspiracies, then that also kind of fits. So Kaldor City was a six-part series, and as I was coming towards the end of it, Lawrence Miles sent me an email saying “would you be interested in taking up Faction Paradox, because BBV don’t want to do it anymore?”  They’d produced six CDs beforehand. I’d heard of Faction Paradox, but I hadn’t ever read any of the books or listened to any of the audios. So I borrowed the audios from Daniel O’Mahoney, who I was working with at the time on the last Kaldor City, Storm Mine, and the books from my girlfriend Fiona Moore, and thought, I could work with this. So I got back to Lawrence and said “I’ll do Faction under the Magic Bullet label!”

Download audio file (01_-_Occams_Razor_Track_1.mp3)

(The opening track of Kaldor City 1: Occam’s Razor. Iago’s arrival, terse and sharp like the character himself, leads directly into the theme.)

CD: Before we proceed with Faction I want to talk a little bit more about Kaldor City. Small start-up companies usually begin with less ambitious, less expensive casts, less experienced sound designers, and even when they can afford top-quality people they usually have more kinks to work out learning the art of writing for audio. Occam’s Razor, the first Kaldor City release, was an extremely polished and professional work right off the bat, with a first rate cast, a tight script, a kicking theme tune, and one of Britain’s best sound designers in the person of Alistair Lock. To be blunt, how did you do it?

AS: Part of it was luck. I met Alistair Lock in 1986, and we’d worked together on Travis: The Final Act, The Mark of Kane, and The Logic of Empire, so obviously when I decided to do Occam’s Razor he was the first person I went to. I had the template of Yojimbo and Chris Boucher’s Corpse Marker book, so I knew the actors I needed to cast, and I already had casting connections from the three Blake’s 7 audios I’d done before. I knew Paul Darrow and got on with him, Trevor Cooper was in The Logic of Empire as well, and Brian Croucher and Peter Miles were in The Mark of Kane. I contacted Russell Hunter through a friend of mine who knew him, and I’d met Russell Hunter myself in 1990 at a convention. Carnell, played by Scott Fredericks in the Blake’s 7 episode Weapon, was difficult to track down, as he now lives in Ireland! I eventually got in touch with him through BBC Residuals, who kindly forwarded on to him a script and accompanying letter- thinking back, it was ridiculous, really, as I’d written a script with Carnell in before I’d even contacted the actor. It would have been a terrible mess if he’d decided not to do it! But he got back to me, “Yeah, sure, I love playing Carnell!” and he rang me up and was a very nice guy indeed. 

When you write a script, you write with specific actors in mind. I wrote Iago specifically for Paul Darrow, however, there were a few other people I had in mind if he couldn’t do it. One of them was Alexis Kanner from The Prisoner, I thought he was a fabulous actor. Though interestingly, in retrospect, I think Alexis Kanner wouldn’t have been a good choice because he was a bit too similar, vocally, to Scott Fredericks. But Paul Darrow agreed to do it full-stop, so I was quite lucky on cast.

I think the reason I had a good idea of how to write a script for radio was down to me being a big fan of Blake’s 7 when it came out, and I used to tape record the stories off the screen. This was before I got a video recorder. And because British television couldn’t afford splashy effects, it relied on plot and character and good dialogue, so effectively it did translate very well to audio. Especially if you’d watched the episode and then immediately listened to it, because then what was going on was cemented into your brain. Whereas, I remember there was one episode that I’d missed on first viewing, but my father taped it for me, called Power. Since I hadn’t seen it, I couldn’t always tell what was going on from the audio tape, so I think it kind of taught me unconsciously that certain kinds of visual information have to be communicated otherwise in audio.

And also, doing Travis: The Final Act was a great help. That effectively was going through Blake’s 7 and picking out the character Travis and how he developed and how he worked, and you would find very, very clever infodumps. There was a great scene in Star One where Servalan effectively tells the plot of what’s been happening up to that point to Durkim to refresh the audience. And it was so cleverly, so brilliantly done by Chris Boucher that you don’t realize it’s a huge infodump. So doing Travis: The Final Act really taught me how to write.

CD: How many scripts had you written before Occam’s Razor?

AS: Travis: The Final Act in a way was a script, because I had to amalgamate all these interviews and segues into a documentary. But the first drama I wrote was The Mark of Kane. So Occam’s Razor was my third proper dramatic script. 

CD: Big Finish productions recruit a lot of their script writers from people who work in other media – novels, for example. Some of them take to writing for audio right away, and some of them don’t.

AS: There’s an art to writing audio, as with writing for all media. I don’t know if I could write a novel. I’ve done guidebooks. I’ve written guidebooks to Blake’s 7 and The Prisoner with Fiona Moore, and we’re working on one for Battlestar Galactica now. 

CD: Did you learn to analyze stories through this fascination and hobby of yours, or were you pursuing this academically in college or graduate school?

AS: Not academically. If I’m interested in something I will move Heaven and Earth. If I really, really want to do something, then I will do it. If I’m not interested, you can’t make me. I didn’t learn to read until I was about nine years old. I was a late developer. The reason I learned to read was I discovered they were doing Doctor Who stories as novels. Doctor Who stories I’d never seen with Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell (the second and first actors to play the Doctor.) So I thought, “I like Doctor Who on T.V. and I want to know what these stories are about, so I will learn to read.” So I think if you’re really interested in something you can really push yourself and do it. 

I have an H.N.C. (Higher National Certificate) in radio production, but that came after. I was doing the Mark of Kane and I thought perhaps I should do a course, so I went on the course and I was doing more than they expected or the course required. So the qualification came after, it didn’t come before.

As for the reviewing, you’ve got to understand what a story’s about, so by reviewing an episode of Blake’s 7 or whatever, by deconstructing someone else’s work, you can actually see how it goes together and then hopefully do your own thing.

CD: I certainly understand what you mean by being motivated by passion. Let’s shift gears and talk about Faction Paradox. Could you give a brief description of Faction Paradox, and describe what the Magic Bullet Faction Paradox audios have to offer?

AS: Faction Paradox came about because Lawrence Miles wrote some Doctor Who novels for Virgin Books and the BBC, featuring them as characters. They’re a kind of time-travelling voodoo cult who cause a lot of trouble by creating paradoxes. At the start, they lived in the Eleven-Day Empire, the eleven days left over when England went on the Gregorian calendar. So it shouldn’t really exist, but it does exist, because they’re in there. It’s a paradox. It’s conceptually absurd, but it’s funny. Lawrence then spun it off into, among other things, an audio series for BBV where Faction gets wiped out by the Sontarans who are working with a character called Lolita. Two of the Faction survive: one of them’s called Justine, the other is Eliza. They go off and have loads of adventures. And in the series that I’m dealing with, they’re involved with the Egyptian god Sutekh, who appeared in the Doctor Who story, Pyramids of Mars.

(The enigmatic Sutekh, lurking in the shadows as only he can.)

CD: Sutekh is another name for the Egyptian god Set, correct?

AS: That’s right. If you do a completely original show, it won’t sell. Because people think, “What’s this? I’m not going to take a chance on this.” And even if it has got actors from Doctor Who it won’t really sell, because people think, “Well I want Sarah Sutton playing Nyssa, not Sarah Sutton playing Cathy, or whatever.” And so with Kaldor City I got Scott Fredericks back to play Carnell, and Russell Hunter to play Uvanov, and I sweated blood to get back Taren Capel himself, David Bailie. He’d actually given up acting and had only started up again just a few months before I contacted him, which was enormous luck. 

So I said, “What sort of hook have we got on this Faction?” And Lawrence said, “I’ve got an idea of bringing in Sutekh.” I said, “I’m glad you said that, because I actually know Gabriel Woolf, who played Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars.” So I contacted Gabriel and asked him, and he said, “Yeah, I’ll come back as Sutekh.”

Download audio file (13_Track_13.mp3)

(Sutekh takes vengeance on the followers of his brother, Osiris, in this excerpt from The True History of Faction Paradox vol. 4: Words from Nine Divinities.)

So a lot of it takes place with the Egyptian gods: Upuat, Anubis, Horus, and Sutekh, and it’s jolly fun. It’s political – Lawrence Miles really does think through his plots. He really, really knows his series – he’s a very coherent plotter. 

CD: The Osirians and the Egyptian mythology that Magic Bullet’s series brought in is a bit of a shift in emphasis from the earlier BBV releases. BBV would bring in Doctor Who related concepts and monsters – the Sontarans, the Peking Homunculi, the prison world patterned after Shada – for one chapter each. (Two CDs constituted a single unified chapter of the BBV releases.) Lawrence Miles is obviously more invested in the Egyptian mythology now, with Sutekh in particular becoming a major ongoing character for 6 CDs. Was this consciously decided to give the Magic Bullet audios a new identity?

AS: Lawrence Miles said to me that he’d always wanted to write a science fiction series based on the Egyptian pantheon since he’d been a kid. I think he saw Faction as a way of doing it. So he had an idea of doing a six-part series with Sutekh, and the various Faction characters also representing figures from Egyptian myth.

There were some changes from the BBV series. I didn’t use Nigel Fairs, who had originally produced the Faction audios. I have nothing against Nigel Fairs, it’s just that A: I didn’t know him, B: He was off to do Sapphire and Steel for Big Finish, and C: I had worked with Alistair Lock, and I couldn’t very well then turn to Alistair and say, “I’ll just go use Nigel.” Especially as we did the first two Factions back-to-back with the last Kaldor City, so it would have been quite expensive, not to say confusing, to have Nigel Fairs there with Alistair Lock: “You’re directing this bit, and you’re directing that.” Ridiculous.

The reason I recast the Faction audios was because if I wasn’t using Nigel, I didn’t feel that I could then poach his actors. We all have certain groups of actors we use again and again, and I observe that a number of the people who have appeared in the original Faction have appeared in Sapphire and Steel and other things Nigel’s done before and since. And also I wasn’t really very happy with this accent that the actress playing Justine had adopted. Because when I was asked to produce the show I went back and read the books, and Justine was this upper-class Victorian girl. And so I didn’t quite understand why she was talking with this Lancastrian accent. Lawrence Miles also wasn’t keen on it. He didn’t really have any involvement with the original CDs – he’d just send a script out and didn’t hear back until he got the CD. So there was a general feeling that the accent was wrong. So even if I did get the original actress back, I’d be saying “could you please change your performance?” So I just recast them. And some fans didn’t like it, but tough. (Laughs)

Truthfully, the last thing I wanted to do was annoy the Faction Paradox fans by recasting the entire series. I thought the best thing to do was minimalize the recasting as much as I could, and in fact I asked Lawrence if we could do the new audios with a completely new set of characters. But he said, “No. Justine and Eliza are going to be in it.” So we compromised, and left out a lot of the characters from the original BBV series, like Lord Sandwich and the transsexual French swordsman, swordswoman, whatever, but kept in Justine, Eliza and Lolita.

CD: In your FAQ, answering this question, you said you wanted to play to Magic Bullet’s strengths and style. What do you feel these are?

AS: One film I was very impressed with was Pulp Fiction, which effectively was a pulp gangster movie with some European art film snuck into it. I like that juxtaposition, and again, Blake’s 7 was also a kind of pulp show, but with some intelligent ideas behind it. I like action-adventure, but thoughtfully done and well worked out. I also like good dialogue and strong characters, and I think that’s what Kaldor City has, and it was these elements that also attracted me to Lawrence Miles’ work. 

Download audio file (Kaldor_Clip_3.mp3)

(In this audio clip from Occam’s Razor,Kaston Iago informs Stenton Rull that he is “not a patient man”.) 

And I also like a six-part story where you have time introduced into a show. For example, although The Caves of Androzani is one of the best Doctor Who adventures ever made, at the end of the story, Peri has all these terrible weeping sores on her legs. And the next episode they’ve all gone and she might as well not have been dragged through caves by a deformed maniac while suffering from spectrox toxemia. Because the reset button has been pressed. I’m never a big fan of the reset button. So I think after story one, story two has to reflect what has happened in story one, and the characters have to reflect that as well. The BBV series had self-contained two part releases, whereas our series is a six-part story, and characters come and characters go, but the ripples of what has happened run strongly through it all. Does this make sense?

CD: Yes, it does.

AS: You explain it to me then, so I can find out what I’m talking about.

CD: Generally I would say you have an affection (which I share) for the pulp serial, but mature ones in which the characters evolve over time. There’s some extraordinary examples of this in current German audio drama, Gabriel Burns being a notable example. I think in a way it’s generational. You have children who were brought up in the 1970s on these British TV shows or German audio tape dramas or American comic books, and now those children have grown up and still want to follow those stories and characters, or those types of characters, but on a more sophisticated level. 

AS: I think that the reason British TV in the 60s and 70s had strong characterization and strong plotting and clever writing was because they didn’t have a lot of money to spend on elaborate effects, and so that’s the kind of stuff that appeals to me. A 50 minute T.V. script is about 5,000 words long. A 50 minute radio script is about 11 to 12,000 words long. Because you can’t do chase sequences very well on audio, you have to fill up the space with talk. So it fits in perfectly with what I like – I like strong characterisation, good dramatic dialogue and intriguing plots, so audio is perfect for me, because that’s all you can really do on it. There’s a scene in Kaldor City: Checkmate where Blayes goes back and has a shoot-out with Iago. If I’d been doing that as a T.V. production, or a film, I would have done it as a huge Scarface-style shoot-out, with security forces storming the house and Iago fighting them off with automatic weapons and all that stuff, but that wouldn’t transfer to audio. It’s a good idea not to have more than two or three characters in a scene, because it can be very confusing for the audience. You’ve got to be more intimate and clever when you’re writing for audio.

CD: For me the purest example of this from your work is a small piece, Kaldor City: The Prisoner, featuring Iago and Landerchild that you did for MJTV’s The Actor Speaks 4: Paul Darrow. It’s just a philosophical discussion, and it’s carried entirely through the dialogue and the actors’ intensity and it’s absolutely compelling. But basically it’s two people talking in a room.

Download audio file (Kaldor_Clip_2.mp3)

(The Actor Speaks vol. 4: Paul Darrow, featuring an original short Kaldor City play, The Prisoner, by Alan Stevens. Click the image above to visit the MJTV website.)

AS: Yeah, I said to Mark, “How many actors have I got?” And he said, “Well, two.”

CD: (Laughs)

AS: Of course, there was a lot of stuff in the news at the time about the Abu Ghraib interrogations, so I thought I’d explore that. But also, in the Chris Boucher Doctor Who story,Image of the Fendahl, there’s some quite interesting stuff in there about how we all know the world is round, but in the old days they believed it was flat and they acted as if it was. I remember there was an old lady I saw years and years ago, and she was losing it a bit, and she was convinced that there was a well outside in the garden. And there was no well there, but the people who were looking after her told me there was a well back in 1937. Do you see what I’m getting at?

CD: Yes, interesting. These things have a conceptual life.

AS: That’s right. So I was basically extrapolating from Image of the Fendahl and The Robots of Death when I wrote The Prisoner. And also I had to fill up 20 minutes. (laughs)

CD: Were you able to record the casts ensemble?

AS: In Faction, from episodes three onwards, the actress who plays Justine and the actress who plays Eliza don’t meet. They were recorded several weeks apart. It’s only through Alastair’s skill as an editor that they appear to be in the same room talking to one another. Also, Chris Tranchell never appeared with any of the characters he talks to, he was recorded separately in a different studio. Neither did Peter Halliday. 

CD: Were the Kaldor episodes also recorded like this?

AS: Well, it varies. For instance, Russell Hunter was available on the same days as Scott Fredericks in Occam’s Razor and in Death’s Head, but Paul Darrow was not. But when Russell came back for the next three, Scott Fredericks wasn’t available on the same days he was available, but Paul Darrow was. So in the first two stories, Russell Hunter was in the same studio reacting back for all the scenes he does with Scott Fredericks, but not with Paul Darrow, and for the next three, it was the opposite. 

Download audio file (Kaldor_City_Clip_6.mp3)

(Paul Darrow (Iago) and Russell Hunter (Uvanov) recorded together. This scene is from from Kaldor City vol. 3: Hidden Persuaders.)

Download audio file (Kaldor_clip_replacement.mp3)

(Paul Darrow (Iago) and Russell Hunter (Uvanov) recorded separately and mixed together later by Alistair Lock. This scene is from Kaldor City vol. 2: Death’s Head.)

The fact is you’re following a script, and there’s only a certain way you can do most lines, plus, you have to have good stage directions, so you don’t have someone whispering “we’ve got to go over there, now” and his companion saying “OK MATE, I’ll FOLLOW YOU!” You’ve got to make sure that the stage directions are clear and you know what you’re doing. But as long as you direct it right, you can tie it all up together. And also, another good thing about audio is that if you have a performance which is poor you can cut it right out. There were a couple performances in the past where someone’s come in and done something and I’ve just thought, “that wasn’t very good at all”, and we just snipped them out and replaced them with another actor. In fact, if you have an actor and he does two or three takes, you can take a line from the first take and put it with another line from the second take, and then can carry on with the rest of the third take. Apparently on another production Alistair was working on, an actress mispronounced a word. And he and William Johnston were able to edit it so that she pronounced it correctly. Alistair himself pronounced a “sh” noise and when it was edited in it just sounded perfect. There’s a lot of great stuff you can do with audio.

CD: It surprises me that you recorded Kaldor in this way, because you had really wonderful chemistry between the actors, and yet they weren’t actually in the same room all the time.

AS: It’s scripts, you see. If an actor knows the character they’re playing, and they’re directed as to what the previous person said or how they said it, then there’s only a particular way you can say a certain line. For example, on one day we got Brian Croucher and Trevor Cooper together, and we recorded all of their lines for three CDs, with me reading in the lines for the missing actors. It’s always a good idea to do CDs back-to-back, you see, it saves a lot of money. Occam’s Razor and Death’s Head were done back-to-back, and Hidden Persuaders, Taren Capel, and Checkmate were all done back-to-back. So on one day we’d record all the scenes involving one set of actors, and on the next, another set of actors. Also, you never do any recordings in scene order, it’s just too time-consuming. It’s not unusual, Big Finish do the same thing as well.

CD: Yes, I know.

AS: Although to be honest, I think they nicked the idea off me (laughs). But it’s very very helpful, because to get all of those actors in the studio on the same day is a logistical nightmare. It really frees stuff up, because you can have someone come in next Tuesday and do it, as opposed to having to be there on the day Philip Madoc is there. Because they’re actors who are working all the time, you’d be very lucky to get them all available on the same day. Alistair Lock is a genius really, a lot of artistry goes into it.

CD: I’ve long been impressed with his work.

AS: I’ve got a good ear for edits. When I listen to other productions, I can often hear if a breath has been edited or cut short. But I can’t hear edits in Alistair Lock’s stuff – it’s seamless, his partner William Johnston does a brilliant job on the dialogue edits. And Alistair’s very very careful about levels, meticulously goes through them and makes sure everything is balanced. He sweats blood literally over it. I’m enormously lucky to have just met him by chance in Cardiff in 1986. 

CD: There’s a richness to the soundscapes he does. They have a kind of aural texture and density that is often lacking in the work of other designers. Two different moments that impressed me were the scene with the sun god Ra, a living Sun inside the Ship of a Billion Years, where he somehow communicates the sun’s immensity and ambient power. In Kaldor City, I was always struck by how carefully he constructed the explosion of the company central building in Taren Capel. People often use a single large “boom!” to represent a building exploding, but that isn’t usually how it happens – different parts give out at different moments, setting off other areas in a series of smaller bangs that crescendo.

Download audio file (23_Kaldor_City_Clip_7.mp3)

Getting back to the Faction, you keep saying Magic Bullet’s Faction Paradox line is a six-part Faction Paradox series. Are more planned after that?

AS: It’s written as a six-part series, there are currently no plans to continue it beyond that.

CD: So the two you’re releasing this year are the finale?

AS: Yeah. Retailers told me when I ended Kaldor, “you’re insane, why don’t you do more?”  And I replied, “well, it’s a six-part series and now it’s finished. There isn’t any more to say.” In fact, people sent scripts in for Kaldor City 7; Fiona and I even wrote Kaldor City 7 ourselves, and then threw it away, because it just proved to us that the show had come to a natural end with Storm Mine.

There’s this good film called Candyman by Clive Barker. It was a hit, and so the studio insisted on doing a sequel. There should never have been a Candyman 2.

CD: (Laughs)

AS: There was even a Candyman 3, and someone on the internet was saying, “Please, God, no more!” I think every story has its course to run, and if you continue beyond its natural end, it will become just a vague, hollow shell of itself. In the last episode of Blake’s 7 there was a huge great shoot-out and they were all killed, and that was it. As much as people protested and asked for the show to come back, it never did, and I think that was absolutely the right decision, because effectively the programme had run its course. And as far as I’m concerned, the Faction storyline concerning the Egyptian gods will have run its course by episode six. 

CD: Ever since the first release, the Eleven-Day Empire by BBV, this has been the story of Eliza and Justine. Justine in particular seems to be the Joan-of-Arc heroine who ties it all together. Is this the end of their story as well, or will it continue in other media?

AS: I can’t tell you that because it would spoil the end.

CD: (Laughs) Fair enough. Is this the end then of Magic Bullet, or do you have other productions in mind?

AS: I have no idea. Magic Bullet was formed to do this six-part Kaldor City series. And Faction Paradox came about simply because BBV no longer produce audios, and Lawrence contacted me. So if within the next nine or ten months someone comes along and says, “Hey, I’ve got this really good idea for a series!” and I look at it and think, “Yeah, okay, I’ll go with that”, then that’s what I’ll be doing next. 

Lots of people approach me for series. But I only do what I want to do. I’m not in it for the money; if a series breaks even, I’m happy. Sometimes you’ve got an itch and you need to scratch it. It may cause me a great deal of effort and stress, but I have to do it. And that was Kaldor City. And the Faction series, I was really taken with it and wanted to go with it. And Lawrence himself really, really wanted to do this. I think the audience appreciates that. I think they can tell when something’s done with a lot of love, really. Lawrence certainly writes these scripts with a great deal of love and I think that comes over.

Next time: In part two of this interview, Stevens talks frankly about the commercial imperatives and creative opportunities of working with licensed properties, comments on the similarities and differences between Paul Darrow’s Avon and Iago, and explains why you should never trust authority figures. 

This week we invite back Lance Roger Axt, audio aficionado, to talk about his work with Play It By Ear Productions, social media guru-dom with the National Audio Theater Festivals, and his new work with AudioComics… which has some Maine roots!

But first… the gospel, according to Chaz?

Download audio file (rdr-podcast125.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival Episode 125 – Lance Axt and Matthew, Mark Luke and Chaz

Credits – Matthew Mark Luke and Chaz

• Written and directed by Robert Grady
• Chip Gudger as Matthew
• Lance R. Axt as Mark
• Matt Mullin as Luke
• Robert Grady as Chaz.

Landing helicopters, strange sound effects, field recording, oh my! Learn about the great audio community that congregates in the Ozarks and hear why one sound artist makes the pilgrimage from Maine to the Midwest each summer.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast123.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival Episode 123 – Interview with Dianne Ballon

P.S. If you’re a listener of this show and are inspired to attend NATF, mention that you heard about the festival on the show and you can still get the early-bird special rate of $425 to attend. But register soon! You’ll need to book flights, too, right?

Register Form (PDF): http://www.natf.org/atw2009/NATF_2009_ATW_Application.pdf

This week I’m pleased to post my interview with Nigel Fairs, who cast, directed, composed and mixed the Faction Paradox Protocols published by BBV. Many know Nigel from his work on the Sapphire and Steel and Tomorrow People audio drama serials from Big Finish productions. In this interview Nigel gives a good-humored, at times surprisingly frank account of his work on the first Faction Paradox audio series. You can learn more about Nigel Fairs at his website.

How did you get into audio drama in the first place?

NF: I’ve been making audio drama since I was about 5 or 6. The very first one I made was called ‘The Green Ghost’ and starred me, my grandmother and my teddy bear (which I voiced). When I was about 11 I started bullying my school-friends into making ‘radio serials’ (some sci fi, some kitchen sink dramas) – two of these poor friends (Linda and Chris) ended up being in the FPs – and carried on making those whilst I was at drama school. When I was a full-time actor I was asked to be involved with the Audio Visuals company (run by Bill Baggs and Gary Russell) which is how I met them, and worked with them professionally later.

Do you listen to audio drama as a pastime as well as a vocation? Are there creators in the field whose work you find particularly inspiring or challenging?

NF: I always have Radio 4 on, yes, so I do hear the odd play and am an avid fan of ‘The Archers’. I’ve had to stop the car on occasions because a scene has reduced me to tears. There was a particularly vivid rape scene a few years back which I think is probably one of the most disturbing pieces of audio drama I’ve ever heard. In my teens I loved listening to a late night adventure serial, I forget what it was called but it started with a gunshot. And later on there was a wonderful fantasy serial called ‘Hordes of the Things’ which I think starred Frank Middlemass (?) and had a magnificent theme tune.

How did the Faction Paradox Protocols series come to be at BBV, and how did you come to be involved?

NF: I’ve no idea how they appeared at BBV I’m afraid – you’ll have to ask Bill that – but, having edited audio drama for about 25 years by then I was keen to do some for Bill and he gave me ‘Faction Paradox’ as an “audition” of sorts. To be honest I had no idea what they were about, really – I’m not a huge sci fi fan and I had NO IDEA they were all about the Time Lords etc (though of course I recognised the Sontarans and tried to do an impersonation of the brilliant actor who played Lynx for the first two). But I thought they were well-written and quirky audio dramas. Sadly the first couple overran and Bill decided we should cut quite a lot of my favourite sections (all of which are on cd somewhere); mostly character monologues which gave them a bit of style, made them stand out I think. But he was the producer and it was his choice, quite rightly, to push the story on.

You wore many hats for the BBV Faction Paradox protocols, directing, casting, acting, composing music, and doing sound design. While this may have been a budgetary necessity, it also gave you carte blanche to put your stamp on the Faction Paradox universe. What was your vision for the series?

NF: To be honest, it wasn’t my vision at all, that was the scriptwriter’s. I used to get the scripts and try to make them good pieces of audio drama. And yes, the budgets were tiny, so that’s why I got to do all the work once Bill and the writer had finished the scripting process!!

Do you have a favorite “hat“? Do you think of yourself primarily as an actor, director, writer, composer, etc?

NF: That’s an interesting question. I think I probably think of myself as a creative person who can turn his hand to all of those things. When I’m doing any particular job I tend to give 100% to it, whichever hat I’m wearing…which can be exhausting, particularly if you’re also cooking lunch for the cast at the same time!

Let‘s take a closer look at your many roles:

Sound design: Lawrence Miles gave you highly visual ideas to convey with sound. How did you decide what a talking tattoo would sound like, or a lethal shadow-weapon? Can you describe how you created the iconic sound of the “sombras que corta“ (shadows that cut), the Faction‘s trademark armament?

NF: Oh crumbs. At the time I was doing FP, I had VERY limited equipment and effects, so I was literally hitting things and twiddling knobs and seeing what they sounded like! The shadow weapons were me bashing an oven tray and a frying pan together and then putting a reverse echo on it!!!! As for the talking tattoo, was that in one of the later ones, the one set on a prison planet? I think that was just me turning the treble up to make the voice sound tinny and small!! The scripts were very very filmic, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. I thought the best thing about them was the character interaction and the overall character storylines. But that interests me more than monsters and space battles anyway!

Music: You also composed the Faction theme music, a witchy mix of harpsichord and calliope. What inspired this sombre-yet-playful tune? It underwent a few iterations over the course of the series, ranging from soft-rock to a later dirge rendition. What occasioned the changes?

NF: I changed the theme because nobody liked the original version!! I think Lawrence thought it sounded too jolly, which, on reflection, is quite right. I think, because of the quirky nature of the monologues and Ellis Pike’s character (Morloch?) in the first episodes, I thought it was meant to be a ‘Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy’-style thing. I mean all that stuff with the swearing witch woman and the Sontarans and the Servalan-type character was all a bit camp!! Of course I later understood that it was meant to be darker than that and tried to change the music accordingly.

My favourite score was for the last two. It was all based round a piece of classical music that was written in the year the flashback (to Justine’s childhood) was set. I remember a bit I was really pleased with when the girls were romping in the fields at the beginning. And also another cue at the end – by then I’d understood that the whole thing was meant to be a sweeping epic and intended to slowly take the style and scores into more filmic territory (like I eventually tried to do with ‘The Tomorrow People’).

Casting: I have the impression that BBV budgets for casting were limited, as casts were small and there were fewer “big-name” stars relative to similar productions from Big Finish and Magic Bullet. However, the casting for the series was effective, with engaging leads and solid performances from even minor characters such as mad King George (Eric MacLennan) and Mary Culver (Jackie Skarvellis). Did you hold auditions for the roles, or were the casts of the Protocols drawn from actors you had worked with before?

NF: There was hardly any casting budget at all. I had to rope in friends I’d worked with in the theatre, promising them that though the money was rubbish I’d cook them a nice lunch and we’d have a drink afterwards! Eric had been my assistant director when I ran a youth theatre in Kent and Jackie had done two or three of my plays in the Brighton Festival. She’s bonkers, a real eccentric lady. I did hold some auditions alongside a theatre play I was casting, which was how I found Suzanne, whom I’ve worked with many times since, and Emma. Both of whom are adorable, and were very enthusiastic about the whole project, though neither of them could pronounce ‘Sontaran’.

On a personal note, I was particularly taken with Ellis Pike‘s performance as Godfather Morlock and Suzanne Proctor‘s as Justine. Any news of what these actors are doing now?

NF: I directed Suzanne in a theatre production about a terrorist suspect last year. She’s fantastic. I think she’s just done some telly and is expecting her second baby sometime soon. She also sings in a brilliant trio. Ellis I haven’t seen for a while, though I know he does quite a bit of theatre. I’m told he also plays the Prince Regent sometimes at Brighton Pavilion! I originally worked with him in the actors’ company at MOMI back in the early nineties.

Direction: This may be more of a compliment than a question, but in reading Lawrence Miles‘s character notes in the scripts, I was struck by how closely the actors realized the nuances of their roles. For example, Miles wrote of the Demetra Kine character from Movers:

Demetra Kine. The villainess of the piece, although she’s not a villain in the sneering, sadistic sense of the term (i.e. she’s not like Lolita from the previous Volumes). Demetra is quiet, controlled, determined and most of all professional: she comes from a culture in which assassination’s an everyday event and empire-building’s a way of life, so as a leading member of a self-made semi-aristocratic family she knows about being clinical and detached. Actually you could say she’s a lot like Michael Corleone, but in fact the closest historical parallel is probably Lucretia Borgia. She always speaks in a slow, measured fashion, and what’s most notable is that she’s always so reasonable, even when the things she’s saying seem bizarre or unacceptable. The underlying sense is that she might, if treated properly, be an ally instead of an enemy.

Kate Dyson did such a superb job that I was getting that “underlying sense“ long before I read this description. While giving Kate her due, you consistently got solid performances from your actors that were faithful to Miles‘s scripts and subtle character notes. In audio drama, with the pressures of limited studio time and often no rehearsals, what do you find effective directing comes down to?

NF: Kate is a superb actress and she was also in the terrorist play I directed last year. Always a pleasure to work with, and a fascinating lady who does a lot of work for human rights. 

Effective direction ALWAYS comes down to casting. If you cast the right person who knows how to do their job, then you’re laughing; they do it!? I always say that the most important part of the studio day is the twenty minutes at the beginning, when everyone’s sitting around having a coffee. That’s when I get to suss how each actor works and relates to each other. It’s invaluable time; my job is to put them at their ease and ensure that a professional working atmosphere is created. This applies to theatre work as well of course.

Acting: You had a few supporting, enjoyable character roles in the Protocols series: Lord Ruthven, an effete time-lord (and reference to Polidori’s Byronic vampire?), and General Kine, a bull-headed yet somehow sympathetic Sontaran officer. After the first two episodes you were largely absent from the casts until the fifth release, where you had a brief walk-on role as the unnamed Reverend. After a notable presence in the first two stories, did you deliberately recuse yourself from the casts?

NF: Not at all!! Again it was a budgetary decision. In the second and third cds there were fewer characters so we could afford to use that number of actors. In the first and last couple we couldn’t so I had to fill in!! I really enjoyed playing the Sontaran, though it was all in post production, as was Lord R. I can’t remember who read it in on the day. Suzanne probably!!

Do you have a favorite Faction Paradox Protocols release?

NF: I liked the middle two the best I think. I loved all those gambling scenes and the clockwork robot things. I think I’d settled down a bit by then and had a bit more of an idea of what I was supposed to be doing. I was pleased with the score – a lot of harpsichord I think, and a Chinesey-kind of theme for the robots. And the cast was wonderful, we laughed such a lot recording that one. Saul Jaffe and Jo Castleton in particular are terrible gigglers. My cat was in it too!!

You‘ve come a long way as an audio drama producer and director since your days at BBV. Looking back at the Faction Paradox Protocols series, what are you most proud of? What would you do differently if you could?

NF: It would have been nice to have recorded it in a proper studio rather than in my bedroom! I can’t bear to listen to them now really, as the quality of dialogue recording is so poor. But they were invaluable to me as far as experience went and I really enjoyed the scripts, I thought they were very different. I’d love to have known what happened next, and had something to do with them, but I understand Alistair Lock did a superb job, so that’s brilliant. I used him several times on ‘Sapphire and Steel’ and love his work.

Magic Bullet‘s later Faction series took a dramatically different stylistic direction. Have you heard any of them? What do you think of them?

NF: Alistair did give me the first one but I’m sorry to say I haven’t listened to it. It’s really difficult hearing someone else make a better job of something you put your heart and soul into with limited money, equipment and resources! But when I was listening to the final edit of one of Alistair’s ‘Sapphire and Steel’s he did play me an excerpt and I thought it sounded brilliant. So I’m glad it has an ongoing life.

So far you have mostly been associated with licensed properties in audio drama, such as Faction Paradox (BBV), Sapphire and Steel, the Tomorrow People, and Dr. Who (Big Finish productions). Do you have any interest in writing or producing original audio drama stories or properties? Or do you believe this is financially impractical for commercial audio drama in the UK today (as Magic Bullet producer Alan Stevens does)?

NF: Oh my goodness OF COURSE I’d rather be producing original drama!! It’s very frustrating indeed being tied to the various limitations of ‘licensed properties’. I think possibly my takes on the ‘Tomorrow People’ and ‘Sapphire and Steel’ series were a little radical for some people – straying too far from the original series for them, maybe – but my main interest lies in making good quality drama and working with talented people. It can be VERY frustrating when you’ve sweated blood and tears over these things and they get dismissed as “rubbish” by people who don’t share your vision; it really hurts, which, if I’m honest, is one of the reasons I’m stepping away from the medium at the moment. Too much pain for too little money!!

I’m working on several original projects at the moment, and also a novel, none of which are paying much, if anything, but are very, very fulfilling creatively.

Generally speaking, with the worldwide economy experiencing a downturn, do you see the British (or larger English speaking) market for commercial audio drama holding steady, growing, or shrinking?

NF: I’ve no idea I’m afraid! I know that in times of recession, ‘feel-good’ drama becomes more popular, so I’m hoping that good theatre will flourish, and good drama with it.

What‘s up next for Nigel Fairs in the world of audio drama? What would you like to do that you haven‘t yet had the opportunity to do? Any dream projects?

NF: My dream project is to write and perform in a theatre two-hander with Lou Jameson. I’ve learnt so much from her as a performer over the years. We’ve had an idea, but that won’t happen until other things have happened (that I can’t talk about!! Listen to me being all mysterious!).

I have another ambition, which is to hear a piece of music I’ve composed being played by an orchestra. If I ever win a vast amount of money I’m going to try to make that happen! But at the moment it’s a pipe dream.

As for audio, I’m enjoying doing post production on the ‘Dark Shadows’ series at the moment, particularly composing the music; it’s all very ‘Interview with a Vampire’, very atmospheric. And I’ve also enjoyed my work on the Dr Who Companion Chronicles, I wouldn’t mind doing a few more of them. 

My biggest regret is that I never got to finish the ‘Tomorrow People’ series – I had a two year story arc set up and the series got cancelled halfway through, which broke my heart. Especially as I met the creator of the original series (which I so loved as a kid) last year and he said I’d done a better job than he had!! I don’t believe it but what a compliment!!

The cast of the documentary includes:

• Edith Ivey: performer in numerous markets and Radio Soaps, including “Guiding Light”
• Rosemary Rice: Grammy, Peabody, and Emmy award-winning performer, from “Archie Andrews,” “When A Girl Marries,” and many othertitles
• Michael McDougald: performer and current Vice-Chairman, Georgia Public Broadcasting
• Michele Hilmes: Director of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, home of the NBC Archives
• Richard Fish: founder of The Lodestone Catalog and broadcaster on WFHB in Bloomington, IN
• Barry Stoltze: AFTRA Atlanta President

We talk with James about how the project came together and what learned about the age of radio, and the role of audio arts as it remains in our cultural backdrop today.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast119.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival Episode 119 – Interview with James Kicklighter

Theme music by Roger Gregg. ?The offer still stands — first three people to correctly guess the Gerry Murphy Poetry where the theme comes from get a Crazy Dog CD shipped to them free of charge!

Theater of the Mind Credits:

Produced by James Kicklighter and Jonathan Pope.

Executive Producers Melanie Stone and Joanna Bastarache

We discuss the joy of presenting radio theater live on stage and how the changing placement of today’s audience affects (or should affect!) how audio artists approach their work. Most enjoyable

Download audio file (rdr-podcast118.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival Episode 118 – Interview with Tony Palermo

As an added bonus, Roger Gregg has given the show yet another gift — a theme! Free Crazy Dog CD to anyone who figures out which Gerry Murphy poem the theme originates from.

Followed with an interview with its creator, Alan McDonald, from cloudy Glasgow.

Enjoy!

Download audio file (rdr-podcast111.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 111

Last week we jumped mid-way into the first season, this week we step back for a look at the “origin” story of the series. Plus a special interview with the producer originally recorded for The Sonic Society.

Enjoy!

Download audio file (rdr-podcast109.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival – Episode 109

Following up the next half-hour of this production is an interview with its creator, Paeter Fransen. Enjoy!

Download audio file (rdr-podcast107.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival Episode 107 – Spirit Blade 2 of 2 and Interview with Paeter Fransen

So break open that new mp3 player and stock it up! We have Christmas classic, Christmas irreverent, lots of voices and more than one surprise in this nearly 3-hour holiday extravaganza.

Soak it up and be Merry!

Download audio file (rdr-christmas-08-part01.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival Christmas Special – Part 1 of 4

• Quicksilver Radio Theater’s haunting rendition of “A Christmas Carol”

Download audio file (rdr-christmas-08-part02.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival Christmas Special – Part 2 of 4

• The Wireless Theatre Company‘s “Pig in Boots”!

Download audio file (rdr-christmas-08-part03.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival Christmas Special – Part 3 of 4

• Interview with Regina Doman and Andrew Schmiedicke of Chesterton Productions

Download audio file (rdr-christmas-08-part04.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival Christmas Special – Part 4 of 4

Interview with Julie Hoverson of 19 Nocturne Boulevard

Best when listened to with a crackling fire in the fireplace, wood stove, or other FDA-approved fire burning apparatus. Thanks to Kevin MacLeod for wonderful holiday music.

A foreigner is brought to see the “wonders” of a remote penal colony, where the operator of a diabolical machine still believes it brings people closer to divinity…

Great listening for your Black Friday iPod!

Download audio file (rdr-podcast098.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 98

The article starts a bit slow, with an oft-used example of the War of the Worlds, but as we get into it Sue drops some great tips:

“The acoustic space is not the same [on CDs] as the space where the actors record, and you can tell. With animals in a zoo, for example, there’s a reverb which can’t be corrected. So getting a sound effects artist to listen and add effects in real time actually saves time. Where the science has advanced is really in post production, with digital recording and editing. But if you don’t understand how the elements of writing and acting and sound design combine in the final product, it won’t matter if you’re producing it digitally, and Pro Tools won’t save you.”

Well said from an artist versed in sound effects. And while ProTools won’t save you, I’m not convinced even being able to produce a killer drama will save you, either (though, as Zizza notes, it might get you a gig doing field sound on a film!).

Again, the lesson is pretty clear: with enough iPods, and stories to put on them, we may get somewhere.

Between chunks of “Razor” we hear from Lansdale about the origins of this dastardly tale, his love of radio drama, and why he thinks audio is such a compelling medium for the horror arts.

Enjoy, and don’t forget, TONIGHT!!! 9-11PM on WMPG (online streaming available) you can listen to the live horror show!? Featuring works from The Grist Mill, FinalRune, Bill Dufris, Crazy Dog Audio Theatre and more…

And if you want to listen to God of the Razor in its entirety, there’s no better place than Echo Fiction.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast094.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival – Episode 94

Download audio file (rdr-podcast084.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival! Episode 84

Plus we get the pleasure of speaking with David Witz, the “man behind the curtain” for this show, and tickle our ears with a special, pre-release copy of the first episode of the upcoming Martha and Dotty: Microwave Mambo.

Enjoy.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast078.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival! Episode 78

P.S. Sorry about the audio quality on the first interview. My trustworthy Zoom H2 seems to have started becoming temperamental.

Enjoy!

Download audio file (rdr-podcast059.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival! Episode 59

Download audio file (rdr-podcast056.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival! Episode 56

So it’s with unbridled enthusiasm that I had the opportunity to speak with the show’s creators, David Accampo and Jeremy Rogers, as well as the multi-talented voice actor Rob Grindlinger. Learn about how these Habit Forming Film creators turned audio producers collaborated in a wild idea that has become massively successful.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast051.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival – Episode 51

Download audio file (rdr-bonus-central-audio-interview.mp3)

Interview with Central Audio Theatre

Followed by a great chat with Doug Bost and Jeff Ward, two of the greatest audio dramatists you haven’t heard of. Learn a little about their history and what makes their audio tick, and hey — check out their new website! www.dougbost.com/unionsignal. You will NOT be disappointed.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast044.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival! Episode 44

Find out in AM/FM Theater‘s stunning adaptation of Mort Castle‘s “If You Take My Hand My Son” — and stayed tuned in for a chat with the story’s author, a prolific and genre-busting writer who’s as much a fan of radio as any of us.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast041.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival! Episode 41

Download audio file (mort-castle-extended.mp3)
Extended Interview with Mort Castle

Download audio file (rdr-podcast034.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival – Episode 34

He also shares some insight on radio legends and what makes producing today different than the golden era.? Then, in a special extension of the episode, we feature 1/2 of Comedy-O-Rama’s New Old Time Radio Hour finale/premiere (depending on how you look at it) with an invigorating new episode of “Duffy’s Tavern.”

Download audio file (rdr-podcast028.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival! Episode 28

Download audio file (rdr-podcast024.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival! Episode 24

With 27 years of making audio happen, a catalogue that rivals that of the Library of Congress, and an unending well of ideas that only needs time to come to delicious audio realization, these two cats have much insight to offer on the state of audio theater.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast022.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 22

Needless to say, they have an excellent rapport and some great insights about the state of audio drama as well as what makes a great story work. Tune in today 1PM on 90.9/104.1 in the Portland, Maine area or via WMPG‘s streaming audio.

Of course, you can always stay tuned for the podcast, which I’ll have together either later today or tomorrow.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast017.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival! Episode 17

Whether it’s epic tales of the Borderland or twisty sci-fi/fantasy/horror genre tales, Jeff loves to craft tales of wonder and delight. Tune in for this opportunity to hear him speak on the art he loves.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast015.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival! Episode 15

Download audio file (rdr-podcast012.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 12

Make sure you take a look at the Three Questions Interview that’ll be up March 20.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast009.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival! Episode 9

Download audio file (rdr-podcast006.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival! Episode 6

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.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast006.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival! Episode 6

Download audio file (rdr-podcast003.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival! Episode 3