We conclude our series New Year, New Audio, as Captain Radio™ guest-hosts once more for Fred Greenhalgh traveling abroad in Africa. On tap for our feature is the Captain’s own non-commercial redux of an episode from the very popular Old-Time Radio series, Challenge of the Yukon. Get ready for plenty of drama, intrigue, and action as your favorite Canadian Mountie and his furry, scene-stealing sidekick continue their relentless pursuit of lawbreakers in the days of the Yukon Gold Rush.

[RATED AD-G]

Sue Zizza of Sue Media and the National Audio Theater Festival returns briefly to help Radio Drama Revival honor distinguished audio dramatist Yuri Rasovsky who passed away last Wednesday, January 18th, 2012.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast263.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 263

Captain Radio™  once again guest-hosts for vacationing Fred Greehalgh as we continue our series New Year, New Audio, which challenges you to step outside your past listening routine, to try something different for you. When you come across something new for you that you really like, share with others about it, so they can broaden their horizons as well.

Last week we featuree the first of a two-part docu-drama, There Is A Field, adapted by Marie Tueje from Jen Marlowe’s play of the same name.

Aseel Aslih

This poignant audio drama explores the life of youthful Aseel Aslih of Arrabeh, Israel. Aseel strove to find a healthy personal identity and peaceful purpose in life while coping with the stark political realities still faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel.

We continue this week with Part 2. After recovering from the shock of her brother, Aseel’s, death, his older sister, Nardeen determinedly seeks answers to the many questions the tragic incident poses for her family as well as their entire community of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

We are very pleased to have as our interview guest for this episode Marie Tueje  who produced this audio drama adaptation by Jen Marlowe of Donkey Saddle Projects, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, human rights advocate, author and playwright.

[RATED AD-PG-13 for some strong language]

Download audio file (rdr-podcast262.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 262

Captain Radio™  hosts once more for vacationing Fred Greehalgh as we continue our series New Year, New Audio, which, yeah, kind of dares you to step outside your past listening routine, to try something different for you. When you come across something new for you that you really like, share with others about it, so they can broaden their horizons as well.

Last week we enjoyed satirical short-shorts from the new “Rythmical Ravings and Rants”, or RRRants, consortium of modern UK troubadors.

This week we flip the theater mask to feature the first of a two-part docu-drama, There Is A Field, adapted by Marie Tueje from Jen Marlowe’s play of the same name.

This poignant audio drama explores the life of youthful Aseel Aslih of Arrabeh, Israel. Aseel strove to find a healthy personal identity and peaceful purpose in life while coping with the stark political realities still faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel.

We are very pleased to have as our interview guests for this episode Jen Marlowe  of Donkey Saddle Projects, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, human rights advocate, author and playwright for There Is A Field as well as Aseel Aslih’s younger sister, Siwar Aslih, calling in all the way from Haifa, Israel.

[RATED AD-PG-13 for some strong language]

Download audio file (rdr-podcast261.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 261

Graphic - FunGraphix.com
Theme music - Shane Lamb

Title: Dead Line Anthology / Shorts (series)
Producer: Jack Ward
Production Company: Electric Vicuña
Type: Dram
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Length: Anthology episodes – about 25 minutes; Shorts – 5-15 minutes
Rating: AD-PG* (psychological horror, mortal danger/fear)
Availability: Free – Electric Vicuña

]]> http://www.radiodramarevival.com/captain-radio-visits-dead-line-anthology/feed/ 1 http://www.radiodramarevival.com/captain-radio-reviews-cosmic-express/ http://www.radiodramarevival.com/captain-radio-reviews-cosmic-express/#comments Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:24:00 +0000 captainradio http://www.radiodramarevival.com/?p=2348 Graphic - FunGraphix.com | Theme music - Shane Lamb Title: The Cosmic Express Producer: Joseph C. McGuire Production Company: Radio Theater Project Type: Drama Genre: Sci-Fi, Speculative Length: 16 minutes Rating: AD-G* Availability: Free to Listen – Radio Theater Project Greetings, Audionauts – Captain Radio here, brought to you by RØDE Microphones, with a review of The Cosmic Express from… [Continue Reading]]]>

Graphic - FunGraphix.com | Theme music - Shane Lamb

Title: The Cosmic Express
Producer: Joseph C. McGuire
Production Company: Radio Theater Project
Type: Drama
Genre: Sci-Fi, Speculative
Length: 16 minutes
Rating: AD-G*
Availability: Free to Listen – Radio Theater Project

Greetings, Audionauts – Captain Radio here, brought to you by RØDE Microphones, with a review of The Cosmic Express from Joseph C. McGuire and Radio Theater Project.

Be ever so careful what you wish for!

[SOUND BYTE]

In the far future, when, for most, work is more past-time than drudge, Eric Stokes-Harding (voice by Carl Waluconis) relieves his techno-lifestyle boredom by authoring adventure stories in former exotic Earth locales now erased by urbanization. He does so the hard way, speaking to an antiquated, voice-activated typewriter-replicant. Though less inclined to stray from her own modern voicewriter, Nadia (voiced by Laura Hale) shares her husband’s wistful longing to interact with more natural apparata:

[SOUND BYTE]

Their commiserating heightens until they genuinely long to abandon their sterile modernity for somewhere far more primal and sensually extreme – somewhere, perhaps, like …:

[SOUND BYTE]
Providentially, an experimental new long-distance travel mode exists, The Cosmic Express, a means so quaint and so familiar to a modern listener that perhaps it was restored from off a dusty shelf in an old 23^rd century relic shoppe. 

Or perhaps the reverse: Three-and-a-half decades after sci-fi author Jack Williamson penned this short story, perhaps a Los Angeles beat cop, and a wannabee Hollywood screenwriter, named Roddenberry conceived something akin to the Cosmic Express as he prepared to make a little television history.

Regardless, the Stokes-Hardings eventually bribe Cosmic Express operator Charlie (voiced by Matt Clausen) with a metal flask of rare, very aged ambrosia. Faster than you can say, “Beam us up, Scotty”, the pair finds themselves stalking the showery alluvial jungles of Venus. All too soon, though, unexpected reverse nostalgia sets in just as neighbors come to call:

[SOUND BYTE]

It helps the couple’s cause little, meanwhile, that Charlie has met his liquor-holding Waterloo in the rare, very aged ambrosia.

The Cosmic Express is the first episode in producer Joseph C. McGuire’s public radio series project, Future Past, which debuts in September, 2011. Produced at Skagit Valley College radio station, KSVR, Future Past will dramatize stories written during the pre-World War II Golden Age of Science Fiction.

While this premier effort might seem, and sound, unpretentious compared to current flashier independent audio production benchmarks, it does authentically recall the audio austerity broadcast during the prime years of network AM radio drama.

Listen to Joseph C. McGuire’s Cosmic Express at the Captain Radio™ Audio Drama Showcase, or hear it and other Radio Theater Project productions at Radio-Stories.Blogspot.Com.

Remember – passionate, unique audio transforms our world … You start with RØDE™

Visit RodeMic.com

Until next time, Audionauts, this is Captain Radio™, signing off!

Download audio file (captain-radio-the-cosmic-express-extended.mp3)

Captain Radio™ Reviews Joseph C. McGuire’s Cosmic Express from Radio Theater Project

 

* Rating based on the Audio Drama Directory Ratings System.

 

This week we set our sights on West Plains Missouri, where each year a national audio pilgrimage concludes with a spectacular live show broadcast across the world. The National Audio Theatre Festivals concludes their weekly workshop with a live show TONIGHT, June 24, 2011 starting 8:30PM EDT. Tune in at: http://www.kkdy.com/index.php

In the meantime, check out our show where we feature NATF’s 2005 production of “Homefront,” a touching tale of a son who sets out time-traveling to change circumstances with his WW2-bound father.

Also, Captain Radio is back with a review of The Cosmic Express by Joseph C McGuire.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast231.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 231

This week we have living history dramatized for you by The Living History Theatre and WYSO of Miami Valley (Ohio). The show, Dangerous Women, chronicles the beginning and end of the nearly century long struggle to give women the right to vote.

The play begins in 1920, during a special election held by the Tennessee state legislature to ratify the 19th amendment. In the tense hours leading up to the vote, as Reimers tells the story, the spirit of the first suffragette, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, reflects on the events of her life and struggle, which led to the first formal demand for women’s suffrage in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York. Giving women the right to vote was considered a threat to the established order and women were considered “dangerous” even to suggest it.

“Dangerous Women” commemorates the 90th anniversary of the amendment’s passage but in Tennessee, the amendment allowing women the right to vote nearly did not pass. More info: http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wyso/arts.artsmain?action=viewArticle&sid=9&id=1715891&pid=25

WYSO has also done several other shows including Sacred Fire: John Brown’s Raid On Harpers Ferry, and The End of Emerald Street.

Our Captain Radio review this week is Harrison Quest, a hilarious tale of fandom that truly transcends words.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast223.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 223

In our first ever Passover holiday show, today we feature the breathtaking original show The Witches of Lublin by Sue Media Productions, featuring a star-studded cast including Tovah Feldshuh, Simon Jones, Neil Gaiman and Barbara Rosenblat with a supporting cast of New York’s finest audio actors, and fresh music by leading klezmer musicians.

Drawing on traditions of Jewish folklore and mysticism, The Witches of Lublin, written by Ellen Kushner, Elizabeth Schwartz, and Yale Strom, weaves together history and myth with the struggle for survival of one woman’s family in an old world Polish city, and offers a glimpse into the lost Jewish women’s lives of Eastern Europe.

Set in the Passover season, The Witches of Lublin is directed by the award-winning Sue Zizza and features haunting vocals and an original high-energy klezmer score by Yale Strom.

First up, Captain Radio reviews two delightful audio programs for children – the new effort Wireless Theatre Kids by our friends at the Wireless Theatre Company, and Sophie’s Adventures in the Dark, a brilliantly sound design mixture of interactive audio and radio drama.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast222.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 222

Our guest today is Jonathan Mitchell, a seasoned radio producer, sound designer and composer whose work has appeared on Studio 360, Radiolab, This American Life, Fair Game, The Next Big Thing, Living on Earth, Weekend America, Marketplace, and All Things Considered. Wow!

What’s most exciting is that Jonathan is a lifelong fan of radio drama, and has created a new series called The Truth, a new fiction program for public radio produced by Jonathan Mitchell and American Public Media.

We feature The Truth’s debut piece, Moon Graffiti, the uses a script written for Richard Nixon in the event of a failed moon landing to explore what might have been said on the surface of the moon if the astronauts knew they weren’t coming home. We also talk to Jonathan, who has a lot of interesting things to say about radio drama (as evidenced in this excellent article on modern radio drama that appeared on Transom).

Our Captain Radio review this week is a double-header, featuring two Chicago based gumshoes, Murder on the Evanston Express and Trouble’s Up in Alphabet Town (a new serial).

It’s a great week of listening – dig in!

Download audio file (rdr-podcast221.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 221

This week we finish our spellbinding and unforgettable feature of three lives intertwined by cheap labor in India… SEVERED THREADS.

Penned by seasoned field recording radio dramatist John Dryden, here is Severed Threads, originally commissioned by BBC Radio 4.

Play write-up:

Vengeance is all that’s on schoolboy Ben’s mind as he pieces together the events surrounding his father’s death. Four thousand miles away in India, journalist Prem is drawn deeper into a dangerous world of exploitation and corruption. In the US, as Jim’s life takes a nose-dive and he is gradually stripped of all he holds dear, his unquestioning faith turns to simmering rage. As these three stories converge, they build towards a terrifying and climatic resolution.

Cast:
Jim ….. Brian d’Arcy James
Prem ….. Ameet Chana
Ben ….. Hugo Docking

US Cast:
Ruth ….. Marsha Dietlein
Faith ….. Amanda Scot Ellis
Pastor McGiven ….. Tom Tammi
Kyle ….. Matt Bennett
Sheila ….. Janet Foster
News Anchor ….. John Leonard Thompson
Billy ….. Jacob Knoll
Harry ….. Craig Bockhorn
Casey/Waitress ….. Felicity Jones
Prison Priest ….. Miles Chapin

India Cast:
Rahul ….. Ankur Vikal
Amit …..Vijay Yadav
Amit’s mother ….. Ayesha Raza
Amit’s brother ….. Sagar Shinde
Welfare Officers ….. Veruschka Menon, Pushan Kripalani
Dr Khunna …… Shaikh Sami Usman
Factory Owner ….. Kenneth Desai
Factory Workers ….. Rupa Kasbe, Jyoti Reddy, Shabana Sheikh,
Rita John, Neeta Chavan, Eisy T. John, Pramod Yedke

UK Cast:
Fiona …. Natasha Little
Timms ….. Henry Goodman
Elgood ….. Francois Testory
Jones ….. Gethin Anthony
Psychologist ….. Kate Fitzgerald
Travel Agent ….. Joanne Ferguson
Heyward ….. Daniel Bridle
Boy …..Callum Francis

Production Team:
India Line Producer ….. Nadir Khan
Assistant Director ….. Tasneem Fatehi
India Sound ….. Ayush Ahuja

US Producer ….. David Rapkin
US Line Producer ….. Kim Moarefi
US Casting ….. Janet Foster
US Sound ….. Frederick Greenhaigh

UK Broadcast Assistant ….. Sarah Tombling
UK Production Assistant ….. Lucy Howe
Music ….. Sacha Puttnam

Written and Directed by John Dryden
A Goldhawk Essential Production for BBC Radio 4.

Our Captain Radio review this week is the uproarious and offbeat Native American comic book romp Super Indian by Arigon Starr.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast220.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 220

This week we continue our feature of three lives intertwined by cheap labor in India… an exploration of the undertow of modern globalism and a test of the theory of degrees of separation… Penned by seasoned field recording radio dramatist John Dryden, here is Severed Threads, originally commissioned by BBC Radio 4.

Play write-up:

Second part of John Dryden’s epic story of inter-connected lives, set on three continents.

When journalist Prem Sharma rescues a child working in a textile factory outside Delhi, seven thousand miles away in Minnesota, Jim Nostrand, proprietor of church-owned clothing firm Cheap Threads, becomes the scapegoat. Meanwhile, in a private boarding school in England, troubled twelve-year-old Ben seems obsessed with school-shootings and vengeance.

Cast:
Jim ….. Brian d’Arcy James
Prem ….. Ameet Chana
Ben ….. Hugo Docking

US Cast:
Ruth ….. Marsha Dietlein
Faith ….. Amanda Scot Ellis
Pastor McGiven ….. Tom Tammi
Kyle ….. Matt Bennett
Sheila ….. Janet Foster
News Anchor ….. John Leonard Thompson
Billy ….. Jacob Knoll
Harry ….. Craig Bockhorn
Casey/Waitress ….. Felicity Jones
Prison Priest ….. Miles Chapin

India Cast:
Rahul ….. Ankur Vikal
Amit …..Vijay Yadav
Amit’s mother ….. Ayesha Raza
Amit’s brother ….. Sagar Shinde
Welfare Officers ….. Veruschka Menon, Pushan Kripalani
Dr Khunna …… Shaikh Sami Usman
Factory Owner ….. Kenneth Desai
Factory Workers ….. Rupa Kasbe, Jyoti Reddy, Shabana Sheikh,
Rita John, Neeta Chavan, Eisy T. John, Pramod Yedke

UK Cast:
Fiona …. Natasha Little
Timms ….. Henry Goodman
Elgood ….. Francois Testory
Jones ….. Gethin Anthony
Psychologist ….. Kate Fitzgerald
Travel Agent ….. Joanne Ferguson
Heyward ….. Daniel Bridle
Boy …..Callum Francis

Production Team:
India Line Producer ….. Nadir Khan
Assistant Director ….. Tasneem Fatehi
India Sound ….. Ayush Ahuja

US Producer ….. David Rapkin
US Line Producer ….. Kim Moarefi
US Casting ….. Janet Foster
US Sound ….. Frederick Greenhaigh

UK Broadcast Assistant ….. Sarah Tombling
UK Production Assistant ….. Lucy Howe
Music ….. Sacha Puttnam

Producer/Director: John Dryden
A Goldhawk Essential Production for BBC Radio 4.

Our Captain Radio review this week is the immersive and innovative audio experience The Realm Unseen, an interactive story that might remind you of those wonderful “Choose Your Own Adventure” books.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast219.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 219

This week we feature a spectacular original story of three lived intertwined by cheap labor in India… an exploration of the undertow of modern globalism and a test of the theory of degrees of separation… Penned by seasoned radio dramatist John Dryden, here is Severed Threads, originally commissioned by BBC Radio 4.

Play write-up:

Jim Nostrand, proprietor of Cheap Threads, a church-owned clothing firm in Minnesota, becomes the scapegoat when news-reports implicate the company in a child-labour scandal.

Four thousand miles away, in a boarding school in the British countryside, troubled twelve-year-old loner Ben, seems obsessed with school-shootings and vengeance.

In India, British/Asian journalist Prem Sharma is making a radio documentary for the BBC about children working in factories. But after rescuing a young boy and taking him back to his village, the reception he gets there is not what he expected.

Over three episodes, these three stories interweave and revolve around each other revealing connections and layers as they build to one climatic resolution.

Cast:
Jim ….. Brian d’Arcy James
Prem ….. Ameet Chana
Ben ….. Hugo Docking

US Cast:
Ruth ….. Marsha Dietlein
Faith ….. Amanda Scot Ellis
Pastor McGiven ….. Tom Tammi
Kyle ….. Matt Bennett
Sheila ….. Janet Foster
News Anchor ….. John Leonard Thompson
Billy ….. Jacob Knoll
Harry ….. Craig Bockhorn
Casey/Waitress ….. Felicity Jones
Prison Priest ….. Miles Chapin

India Cast:
Rahul ….. Ankur Vikal
Amit …..Vijay Yadav
Amit’s mother ….. Ayesha Raza
Amit’s brother ….. Sagar Shinde
Welfare Officers ….. Veruschka Menon, Pushan Kripalani
Dr Khunna …… Shaikh Sami Usman
Factory Owner ….. Kenneth Desai
Factory Workers ….. Rupa Kasbe, Jyoti Reddy, Shabana Sheikh,
Rita John, Neeta Chavan, Eisy T. John, Pramod Yedke

and children from the Akanksa Foundation, Mumbai

UK Cast:
Fiona …. Natasha Little
Timms ….. Henry Goodman
Elgood ….. Francois Testory
Jones ….. Gethin Anthony
Psychologist ….. Kate Fitzgerald
Travel Agent ….. Joanne Ferguson
Heyward ….. Daniel Bridle
Boy …..Callum Francis

Production Team:
India Line Producer ….. Nadir Khan
Assistant Director ….. Tasneem Fatehi
India Sound ….. Ayush Ahuja

US Producer ….. David Rapkin
US Line Producer ….. Kim Moarefi
US Casting ….. Janet Foster
US Sound ….. Frederick Greenhaigh

UK Broadcast Assistant ….. Sarah Tombling
UK Production Assistant ….. Lucy Howe
Music ….. Sacha Puttnam

Written and Directed by John Dryden
A Goldhawk Essential production for BBC Radio 4.

We also have Captain Radio again with a review of Cat Whackers by Washington Audio Theater, a new audio podcast so outrageous you have to listen to believe it.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast218.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 218

Graphic - FunGraphix.com | Theme music - Shane Lamb

Title: 1918
Producer: Aural Stage Studios
Type: Comedy/Drama
Genre: Action-Adventure
Availability: Free – 1918 Show Site

Greetings, Audionauts – Captain Radio here with a review of Aural Stage Studio’s initial production, 1918.

Toward the end of World War I, if an off-course alien armada’s spaceships randomly crashed around our globe and you suddenly acquired highly-advanced alien weapons, what might be your first instinct?

[AUDIO CUE]

To her credit, Evelyn Ceriwyn, a vaudevillian performer aversely transformed into a savvy femme fatale (and portrayed by equally versatile actress Robin Reed), more often remains clear-headed. However, her brainy Allied scientist sidekick, Henry Isotope (rendered with hilarious aplomb by classical thespian Patrick Pizzolorouso) seems nigh incapable of casting off his boy-in-a-toystore fixation with alien tech.

These two set out to recover and to unlock the mysterious power of the off-world Orbs, master control devices that respond only to interaction with Evelyn. Racing against them to extract the same secrets are Avery Pearson’s “Dr.Heffeweissensteinhagen,” Alyssa Simon’s “Frau Hera,” and a fearsome creature resurrected with alien technology.

Aural Stage Studios, created to help productions at all funding levels maintain professional audio quality, came together as a collaboration between sound designer Matthew Boudreau and his mentor, Mike de Almeida, the resident sound designer at State University of New York in Oswego.

When Matthew and actress/director, Samantha Mason, decided through Aural Stage Studios to produce an original feature, she introduced him to playwright/actor Richard Lovejoy who, in turn, suggested adapting his dormant spec television script for 1918.

Though Samantha might have thought her role in the deal done, ‘twas not. Swiftly drafted as Director, she demonstrated subtle skill overseeing that everyone did their job to the level of professional potential present across the actor and designer resumes. In particular, Matthew and Mike combined their skills to give the production a refreshing sense of aural depth and clarity and sonic seamlessness that make it an adventure to hear.

Lovejoy joins in his own mayhem, depicting deadpan Dr. Xavier Xanders, Isotope’s colleague and an unimpressed “Control” who must endure Isotope’s “Agent 86” antics as, here, the latter shows off one of his “toys” to Evelyn:

[AUDIO CUE]

Discovering The Order of the Horizon’s secret lab trashed, the three confront Abe Goldfarb’s sneering, malevolent automaton re-creation of someone quite familiar:

[AUDIO CUE]

With most of the relatively brief episode allotted to introduce story premise and style as well as principal characters, this first 1918 offering runs a bit light on presumable action. However, the final scene leaves the audience locked and loaded for plenty to follow.

[AUDIO CUE]

Chris Chappell’s alternatingly heroic, eerie, and poignant scoring complement well Lovejoy’s script which seems to strike a good balance between sci-fi drama/tension and comic relief. And Pizzolorouso’s frenetic Isotope briefly had me bemusing whether, in that alternate timeline, Ritalin should be sold over the counter.

Listen yourself to 1918, Episode One on the First Sound channel at captainradio.com or by visiting the production web site at 1918show.com. While there, be sure to catch the previews which tantalizingly hint at what’s to come in this quirky pleaser as new 10-minute episodes appear every two weeks.

Until next time, Audionauts, this is Captain Radio, signing off!

Download audio file (captain-radio-aural-stage-studios-1918.mp3)

Captain Radio reviews 1918 from Aural Stage Studios!

Hooool-ey, mol-ey, folks. After months of anticipation we’re eager to finally have our sweaty paws on a copy of FinalRune’s remastered podcast-safe edition of The Cleansed – Episode Zero. This thing is crazy!

On Halloween, 2038 the world is a precarious place. We’re running dangerously low on oil and the electric grid is down on most of the East Coast. The National Guard maintains a state of martial law and food supplies are precarious. A group of soldiers is ready to kick back and enjoy a leisurely night of – what a concept! – radio drama. It’s the 100th anniversary of “War of the Worlds” and a group of university students want to re-create it before the captivated crowd.

Stephen King‘s own rock n’ roll radio station, WKIT, prepares the live broadcast to a desperate public. But this time, it’s not Martians that threaten the demise of humanity – but ourselves.

So begins The Cleansed, a massive post-oil audio epic that FinalRune has been working on for years. They’re aggressively fundraising now and hope we can get your support to keep more episodes coming as they go into production this fall. More importantly, they want you to tell your friends!

And, speaking of kick-ass audio drama, we Captain Radio‘s splendid review of 1918, a new larger-than-life audio serial that explores the question of: how would World War 1 be different if advanced alien weapons were available?

Don’t miss this episode of the ‘pod.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast215.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 215

This week we have a second-round of seasonal programming from The Twilight Zone.

Today’s tale has a child, a gift for humanity, a small rural village. Wait, is it the Christmas tale? Not quite. Aliens and the Mexican army collide in this adaptation of “The Gift.”

COMMITTED TO THE RADIO DRAMA REVIVAL ARCHIVES. TO HEAR THE SHOW, VISIT TWILIGHT ZONE RADIO WEBSITE.

Wow! Lots of exciting news here. So, as you might remember, I had the great pleasure of working with BBC Director John Dryden in New York City this past August. His new show, “Severed Threads” airs at last, and you’ll be able to hear it on BBC Radio 4′s Afternoon Play slot over the next three days.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vvx21

I also got the great opportunity to actually be FEATURED on the BBC Radio 4 Blog, yeah!

Here’s a clip of what I had to say about recording on location with John Dryden in NYC:

Recording on location requires nerves of steel – keeping your cool when cars drive by, airplanes take off overhead, dogs bark incessantly or a foghorn goes off. Or, as in the case of our trip to suburban New Jersey, when an army of gardeners with high decibel equipment shows up in the middle of the session. Juggling an uncontrollable, noisy world with the needs of a large cast and production crew seems a way to drive yourself insane.

And maybe it does. But for John Dryden – who kept a good attitude and smiled through the most stressful parts of recording – maybe it’s also the knowledge that all the trouble is worth it.

In case there was any doubt… Here’s a clip of us recording in a New York City apartment:

Stay tuned to the Afternoon Play this week for more Severed Threads!

And now the extraordinary finale of the BBC Radio 4 production by John Dryden, Margaret Atwood‘s The Handmaid’s Tale. The story tells of a dismal future where the lines between church and state are no longer distinguishable, woman are no longer allowed to own property and free, fertile women are conscripted to become “handmaid’s” – stand-ins for infertile wives in a world where sterility seems rampant.

Part 3 of 3.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast192.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 192

We continue our delicious treat of BBC radio drama this week with the second part of John Dryden’s inspired adaptation of Margaret Atwood‘s The Handmaid’s Tale. The story tells of a dismal future where the lines between church and state are no longer distinguishable, woman are no longer allowed to own property and free, fertile women are conscripted to become “handmaid’s” – stand-ins for infertile wives in a world where sterility seems rampant.

Also in this episode: Announcing the launch of Transcontinental Terror, a 6-hour audio festival going down on Halloween, and the availability of Starstruck, a new audio comic adventure on CD!

Part 2 of 3.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast191.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 191

This week we feature two more delicious bits of audio – a new original five-minute audio short by FinalRune Productions called “The War on Poverty.” After so many successful wars on ideologies, America decides to fight its most entrenched evil – poverty.

Followed by a redux of The Last Harbinger, the chilling and darkly satirical story of Moloch by Roger Gregg. In light of all the madness in our world today, it seemed about time to feature the show again. Part 1 of 5.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast185.mp3)
Download Radio Drama Revival – Episode 185 (MP3)

Serialized audio adventures continue from last week… We have part 2 of FinalRune’s new release, “The Troll of Stony Brook,” and two more parts of ZBS’ Lady Windermere’s Brass Fantabulous.

This is the last we’ll be hearing of ZBS’ steampunk goodness so head over to ZBS to purchase the remaining episodes if you’re enjoying the tale.

Meanwhile, on a new road through what once was forest, two teenage boys hunt down a large creature they came across the night before…

Download audio file (rdr-podcast181.mp3)
Download Radio Drama Revival – Episode 181

This week we highlight the week-long National Audio Theater Festivals going down right now in West Plains, Missouri.

In fact, keep your ears peeled to their website as they’ll be streaming live at 8PM EST tonight with their 2010 show: http://natf.org/home/528

Anyways, what we’ve got on the ‘pod is work from 2003 and 2005. Listen to some of the best from this annual audio drama celebration!

Download audio file (rdr-podcast179.mp3)

Download Radio Drama Revival – Episode 179

You have minutes to tell a story… Go!

So was the challenge presented by Lance Axt in his contest “You Have Five Minutes.” What follows is a thirty-minute show of dazzling diversity, showcasing what unique things can happen in short-form sound!

Get it while you can, as we’re posting it for only two weeks and then it will only be available as a pay-per-download from the Spoken Network.

Also! Don’t forget to pitch in to help Radio Drama Revival. Please donate 5 bucks to WMPG and voice your support for this podcast. Just click the Paypal link below:

COMMITTED TO THE RADIO DRAMA REVIVAL ARCHIVES! Details on when you can purchase this show will go up as they are available…

What can I say? I love Chatterbox’s audio work because they keep putting out challenging, interesting, original stuff. I recently listened to their show “Homestead” and it was show arresting I knew I had to feature it on the show.

Meet three adult children as they return to their childhood home for the last time. Memories bubble up to the surface, and once all of them have been acknowledged, their relationship will be changed. Forever.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast164.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 164

This week we conclude our trip to a remote mountaintop of Chile, where we encounter four humans on a direct collision with the cosmos, themselves, and the weirdnesses of fate. Who is really in control of our destinies? What’s in a name? Pluto, by Promising Productions, examines these questions in a way that only art can.

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

Today we continue our focus on UK alternatives to the BBC with the aptly titled Promising Productions.

Promising Productions looks to the result of efforts from two talented journalism, marketing, and multimedia professionals who have turned their efforts to radio drama in order to get some new, original plays out there. Pluto is an indication of great things to come.

On a mountaintop in Chile, a dying scientist, his daughter, ex-wife, and a boyfriend find themselves looking to the skies, and themselves, for answers about mysteries near and far to the far. Part 1 of 2 today.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast139.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 139

the flickerman is a cerebral, post-modern, interactive audio…. something. Is it a drama? Is it reality? The two seem to blur as we talk to the series’ producer – Lance Dann – who tells us how this intense audio conspiracy was re-created from tapes sent to him by his friend Cornelius, and how the very success of the series threatens its downfall.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast132.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival – Episode 132

Title: Dead and Gone
Author: Adaptation of James Joyce
Producer: Chatterbox Audio Theater
Type: Audio Drama
Genre: Drama
Availability: Forthcoming download

My Two Cents: If you’re a loyal listener to the show, you’ve heard me rave about the Chatterbox Audio Theater, a Memphis-based audio theater group who have brought us excellent adaptations (Kafka’s In the Penal Colony) as well as stunning originals (The Dead Girl, anyone?). Their latest, “Dead and Gone,” does not disappoint.

“Dead and Gone” is a Southern retelling of the James Joyce tale, “The Dead.” Yes, you heard me right.

Not only does Chatterbox have the guts to take on James Joyce, but they transpose wintry and gloomy Dublin with Memphis. F–in brilliant! The adaptation is right-on, from the transposition of an ill-fated love from Galway to New Orleans, to the accusation of misplaced loyalties from “West Briton” to “Scallywag.”

Good, good, good.

My hat also goes off to the great cast of Chatterboxers, who put umph and vitality into every ounce of their performances. The production is serious drama, and while the sound effects and music are understated, they fit this terse and introspective story well.

As far as listening to this fabulous production? It’s not available for public consumption from Chatterbox’s website just yet. I caught one of their notices to hear it live on WKNO in Memphis. The next opportunity is Sunday, August 16 on KUNM-FM, 6PM MDT (8PM for us in the East). Here’s the live listen link: http://kunm.org/listen/. If you miss the live event, you’ll be able to hear it from Chatterbox’s website, eventually.

Serious drama in audio is about as hard as it gets. But Chatterbox pulls it off with the hardest artist there is, and in spades. Bravo!

Title: The Flickerman
Author: Lance Dann
Producer: Lance Dann
Type: Audio Drama
Genre: Not Quite Sure
Availability: Free Download

My Two Cents: I don’t want to give too much away on work that’s going to appear on the show, but I have to say something about Lance Dann’s The Flickerman. There’s nothing like it in audio. There might never be again. It’s worth listening to both as a unique audio event and for the intriguing story it tells.

On the surface, the story of The Flickerman seems pretty vanilla – a young man finds himself in a series of increasingly stranger random encounters and soon gets in over his head as things go weird. What makes this story eff’ing brilliant is that the narrative is hooked into Flickr, and the story calls upon you to explore photos through Flickr as the narrator’s life begins to unravel around him. Postmodernism pulled off exceedingly well.

Lance tells me… well, Lance tells me that this comes from tapes recorded by Cornelius himself, so I’m not sure what to tell you. The story bleeds the edge between reality, fantasy, text and subtext. The show does pick up at a slow pace, but if you’re along for the self-reflective ride, you’ll find yourself hooked on this thing.

The Flickerman will be featured on Radio Drama Revival later this month.

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.

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!!

Welcome to the Malleus critical overview of the Faction Paradox audio drama serials, The Faction Paradox Protocols (BBV) and The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet). Before we discuss the Faction’s past, let’s take a brief glimpse at its future. Courtesy of Alan Stevens and Magic Bullet, I’m honored to present the web premiere of this exclusive clip from The True History of Faction Paradox #5: Ozymandias.

Download audio file (01_Osirian_Charm.mp3)

Guided by a recurring vision and a fragment of poetry, two adventurers take the first steps onto a journey which will lead them to an alien world of nightmarish architecture, insect civilisations and strange women who are much more than they seem…

For on this planet, a tribunal is assembling– a tribunal which will decide the final contest between Horus and Sutekh, and with it, the fate not only of the Osirian Court and Faction Paradox, but of the universe itself.

Click below for more clips from the entire Faction Paradox range, and a frank look at a fascinating and uncompromising science fantasy series unlike anything you’ve heard.

BBV’s Faction Paradox Protocols and Magic Bullet’s True History of Faction Paradox are not light fare. If you’re looking for another stale George Lucas / Joseph Campbell “hero’s journey” or a reductive morality play a la Star Trek, you’d do better going to the local cinema. Let’s not mince words: as charming as they can be, neither of these famous franchises will ever produce anything nearly as smart as The Book of the War. If on the other hand you get a mental rush from fascinating ideas, lush soundscapes, and layered characters, then you are absolutely in the right place. The Faction Paradox audio drama serials published by BBV and Magic Bullet are complex, flawed, difficult, inspired, and well worth your time.

I hope this essay will be of use to Doctor Who fans, but Faction Paradox is just too provocative and too good to be confined to Who fandom any longer. Accordingly, you won’t need any foreknowledge to follow this argument, and what little foreknowledge you require to enjoy the audios I intend to provide here. Although there is some critique, this is less a review than a commentary on the two serials. It’s lengthy, so for user-friendliness I’ve divided it into three parts. Part one provides the basics: the backstory, the central characters, and important themes. Part two makes the case for why the series is worth your time, arguing that it has considerable ashe, prana, funk, chi – whatever you want to call that elusive spark of life that “commercial spin-offs” aren’t supposed to have. Part 3 looks frankly at the strengths and weaknesses of the two Faction Paradox serials. Courtesy of BBV and Magic Bullet productions, I will be illustrating my comments with audio clips from both the Protocols and True History releases.

Part one: What is Faction Paradox?

Faction Paradox is a darkly playful science fantasy universe developed by Lawrence Miles, with contributions from other authors. It currently encompasses several novels, an abortive comic book series, and two linked audio drama serials, The Faction Paradox Protocols (BBV) and its successor, The True History of Faction Paradox (Magic Bullet).

If this sounds overwhelming, don’t despair: the audio dramas are the most grounded and accessible of the Faction Paradox offerings. Rather than a tangent, the audio drama serials constitute the (more or less) linear narrative spine of Faction mythos. That narrative is driven by two capable, intelligent, and dangerous women – Cousin Eliza and Cousin Justine. We’ll return to them in a moment.

Faction Paradox writ large is about the nature of time, or rather, having intellectual fun with the nature of time. In Faction mythology a race of technologically advanced beings organized into Great Houses imposed a new temporal reality on the universe. They anchored Time itself in a lineal chain and set themselves up as its overseers. By using timeships (Tardises), the members of these Great Houses (Time Lords) could travel through time and space to anywhere and anywhen. Strict protocols were imposed to govern what, when, and where they could exert influence, so their construct of Time would not be endangered. Essentially, the Houses established themselves as temporal technocracies.

These Houses are currently embroiled in a War with an unknown Enemy, a war that takes place in and through time itself. As Miles puts it, the conflict is ultimately between “Cause” and “Effect”. The whole thing smacks more than a little of postmodern critiques of how the West constructs ideas of progress and history, only in this case those critiques have been weaponized. The Houses, pressured by the Enemy, are forced into new alliances and even genetic unions with “lesser” (non time travelling) races. Basically, the unchanging Houses are being forced by the War to adapt in ways beyond their ability to predict or control. As they say in Akira Kurosawa’s epic film Kashemuga, “the mountain has moved.”

Download audio file (Lord_Mortega_and_the_War_King_discuss_politics.mp3)

(Audio Clip: Lord Mortega and the War King, military leader of the Great Houses, discuss Lolita and the state of the War. An excerpt from The True History of Faction Paradox #3: Body Politic.)

Faction Paradox, a fallen House, is a third party. Anarchic, playful, and unpredictable, the Faction revels in violating the codes of other Houses, hence their fallen status. The War between the Great Houses and the Enemy impacts and influences the Faction’s activities, but rather than choose a side they play the powers against one another to their own advantage.

Just as the Doctor in Doctor Who or Ellegua in Yoruba mythology are trickster figures, Faction Paradox is a trickster society. (The fact that tricksters, by definition, do not belong to societies is one of the many paradoxes this series delights in.) Not surprisingly eccentrics of every stamp swell the Faction’s ranks, but Doctor Who fans should not expect a nation of Doctor clones. For one thing, the Doctor’s heroic moral code is not in much evidence, and while the Faction do help people on occasion, they do so out of self-interest. They also hurt and kill others out of self-interest. Miles substitutes a grey moral web for the Doctor Who T.V. show’s “twinkle-in-the-eye” magical optimism. (And arguably, for its “twinkle-in-the-eye” patriarchalism.) Listeners are never allowed to commit to the Faction characters carelessly or entirely.

The shadow of the Doctor does touch the Faction scripts. Unconventionally brilliant, droll, and outlandish mentor figures recur throughout the series. In the Protocols, Godfather Morlock and Mary Culver fulfill this function, while in the True History, Egyptian Gods Anubis and Upuat do. None of them have the selfless heroism or youthful brio of the Doctor, masking their nobler acts with wry humor or affected detachment. If anything, the problem is not that they resemble the Doctor too much, but rather each other.

The biggest departure from the Doctor archetype, however, are the heroines of the series. The Faction Paradox audio dramas focus on three characters: protagonists Cousin Justine and Cousin Eliza, and their enigmatic nemesis, Lolita. Lawrence Miles describes them in his character notes for The Eleven-Day Empire:

Cousin Justine. Main protagonist. Faction Paradox recruit. Young, probably early twenties. Recruited from nineteenth-century England, and it shows. Polite. Demure. Tends to be overly formal, and therefore an unusual candidate for a time-travelling voodoo cult. Probably quite uncertain about her new role in life. Nineteenth-century upringing means that she’s ashamed and embarrassed by the fact that she comes from a family of witches, even though it’s the reason the Faction’s interested in her. Actually capable of being quite aggressive, but only when she’s sure of what she’s doing. At the moment, she isn’t.

Cousin Eliza. Another twentysomething Faction recruit. Born and raised in the twentieth century, so more relaxed than Justine (but probably just as messed-up). London girl. Closer to Justine than anyone else, although that isn’t saying much. Seems to have very little faith in the Faction’s methods. Goes along with them anyway. Unwilling to risk stepping out of line, despite a noticeable cynical streak.

Lolita. Villainess. Aristocratic, but with no respect for tradition. Dangerous. Utterly amoral. Apparently in her thirties (though she’s not human, so her actual age is open to debate). Political. Manipulative. Believes herself to be superior to most other life in the universe – as it turns out, there’s a good reason for this – and regards everybody else with quiet amusement. Hard to imagine her taking anything seriously: everything she does is pre-planned, and therefore there’s never any reason for concern. Gives the impression of being “untrustworthy” rather than “slimy”. Doesn’t really care one way or another.

The conflict between these three characters centers around Lolita’s quest to extinguish Faction Paradox, and the odyssey Justine and Eliza undertake to redeem or avenge it.

What’s Lolita’s motivation? Much of the fun of Faction Paradox is putting together the pieces for yourself. However, some pieces of the plot – Lolita most of all – are arguably missing or incomplete if you have no background in Doctor Who lore. For those without that knowledge, I offer my take on Lolita below. For those who want to discover it for themselves, skip down to “SPOILERS OFF”. (And keep in mind, I may be entirely wrong.)

“SPOILERS ON”

Lolita’s goal, it seems to me, is attaining the ultimate conflation of being and time. It is never explicitly stated, but Lolita is a sentient timeship. If a Time Lord is a person who can use a timeship to travel through time, a sentient timeship that can travel through time and space of its own volition is an evolutionary advance. Not content with that, Lolita wants to take it a step further: becoming time and space, attaining complete temporal and spatial omnipresence. Becoming sentient history, if you will.

BUTE: You talk of history as if it were a thing?

LOLITA: Well, of course I do. I’m going to be one, when I grow up. Myself and all my bloodline.

- from In the Year of the Cat, The Faction Paradox Protocols IV

The fusion of genetics and time is a running theme in the Faction Paradox audio dramas, most notably in the concept of biodata. Biodata encompasses not only a person’s genetic code, but their entire historical timeline. A person with an incomplete genetic code will have potentially lethal physical deformities; a person with incomplete biodata will fade in and out of existence throughout their lifetime.

“SPOILERS OFF”

For reasons not yet given, Lolita has determined that only Faction Paradox could upset her grand ambition. Her first attack isolates and exiles Cousins Justine and Eliza, sending them on an odyssey of self-preservation, salvation, and revenge.

Justine, a young “Cousin” (low-ranking Faction initiate), is forced by Lolita’s actions to quickly evolve from foundling to Joan-of-Arc style messiah figure. These audio dramas are ultimately her story. Eliza, introduced as a foil to Justine’s mysticism, has functioned mainly as a cynical Sancho Panza / Dr. Watson commentator. She’s been our anchor in the Faction universe, providing a grounded perspective even as Justine becomes more driven and remote.

Neither Justine or Eliza are very emotive characters, but they draw you in just the same. Justine’s uncertainty and air of innocence makes her sympathetic when she first appears, while the indomitable sense of purpose she develops lends her a magnetic quality later. Eliza’s world-weary, almost slacker perspective is laced with an enjoyable mix of humor and pragmatism. Although “messiah” fits Justine pretty well, it isn’t easy to use the word “hero” to describe either her or Eliza. In fact, Justine and Eliza’s antagonists frequently display more of the raw human feeling that we associate with “goodness”.

Download audio file (09__O.K._Bring_Her_Down…_.mp3)

(Audio Clip: Eliza tortures the Malakh soldier, Jalal, to coerce information from his commander, Merytra (Isla Blair). An excerpt from The True History of Faction Paradox #2: The Ship of a Billion Years.)

Lawrence Miles has made Justine and Eliza associates of convenience rather than friends or rivals, and their emotional reserve towards others extends to their own relationship. Miles seems to prefer noncommittal ambiguity to overwrought hero/sidekick cliches. This tactic has kept Justine’s and Eliza’s ultimate roles in the saga – even their ultimate dispositions towards each other – hard to predict. It has also rendered their relationship inert, at least until very recently. Justine and Eliza’s most colorful interactions typically occur not with each other but with supporting characters. Only in the latest Magic Bullet episode, Words from Nine Divinities, has the status quo between Justine and Eliza shifted dramatically.

Part two: An artistically vital “spin-off”

Faction Paradox is time-traveling science fantasy with a dark, intellectual edge. It is also a “Doctor Who spin-off”. “Science fantasy with a dark, intellectual edge” sounds generic and the word “spin-off” carries the unfortunate (but often true) connotation that a work is aesthetically derivative and / or moribund. And this is where Faction Paradox is exceptional, making it worth my time and yours: it is uniquely, vibrantly alive.

I can defend the uniqueness of Faction Paradox, on a superficial level, in terms of simple mathematics. Miles brings at least five times as much new material to the table as he borrows from Doctor Who. To take one example, consider the sombras que corta (“the shadows that cut”), the Faction’s unique weaponry. These are living shadows, able to act independently from the bodies they are attached to. Every Faction agent’s shadow is bonded with a specific weapon, a weapon that the agent’s actual body does not carry. Thus even while physically unarmed, Faction agents can wield their shadows with lethal swiftness. This conceit is interesting enough. But Miles isn’t content to let the idea go as a simple sci-fi fetish, and through Justine in particular, takes it much further:

Download audio file (Godfather_Morlock_and_Justine_deal_with_a_bomb.mp3)

(Audio clip: Cousin Justine and Godfather Morlock attempt to defuse a Sontaran bomb in a tensely wrought moment from The Faction Paradox Protocols #1: The Eleven-Day Empire.)

There is of course a larger question at stake, in terms of Faction Paradox’s claim to genuine artistic life, than its “spin-off” relationship to Doctor Who. Namely, does it work as effective drama, or is it just more clever sci-fi claptrap? I admit it feels strange to be typing this essay so soon after Fred Greenhalgh’s wonderful interview with Crazy Dog’s Roger Gregg, whose approach and style seem almost antithetical to the notion of commercial art as art. Gregg’s work strikes me as Dionysian in the best sense, celebratory, fecund, erotic, generative and unpredictable. He brings a wild energy to his plays that, by comparison, makes the grey deadness of most commercial dramas all the more apparent. In short, Gregg seems like all you could wish for in an artist’s artist, a bacchic saxophonist.

To borrow further from Nietzsche and Paglia, Lawrence Miles’s work is in many ways textbook Apollonian: intricately plotted, classically controlled, and almost mathematically poised. Eros? There isn’t any. The only love you’ll find in the Faction Paradox audios is maternal, paternal, or platonic. And the author’s work, like (I suspect) his life, is saturated with a geek’s love of the fantastic and its eruptions in popular culture. Miles is probably less concerned with challenging the boundaries of what we consider dramatic art than he is with challenging the canon of British science fiction.

Yet the effect of Miles’s surfeit of Apollonian control is very much the domain of the Greek god of wine: intoxication. His blend of the meticulous and the phantasmagoric places Miles within the literary tradition of intellectual fantasists like Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. Like them, Miles goes well beyond the boundaries of genre with playful explorations of the nature of time, narrative, and being. Consider the inventively absurd notions of using a “tracking knife” to slice into a corpse’s personal timeline or looking through Big Ben’s clock face to dissect a battle in progress.

Download audio file (Cousin_Eliza_and_Godfather_Morlock_discuss_the_ongoing_assault.mp3)

(Audio clip: Cousin Eliza and Godfather Morlock discuss the ongoing Sontaran attack on their home in The Faction Paradox Protocols #1: The Eleven-Day Empire.)

Miles is very much representative of what comic book writer and journalist Steven Grant calls the British school of “mad ideas,” the origins of which Grant traces to 60′s new wave science fiction. Miles’s scripts are dense with ingenious, absurdist inventions, some of which advance the plot, many of which are just there to delight and provoke the mind. This is, in my opinion, his greatest strength as a writer and the best reason to check out these audio dramas. Faction Paradox succeeds most because it is fascinating and entertaining to think about.

If I have one complaint about Miles’s scriptwriting, it is that he doesn’t unleash his wildest conceptual experiments in his audio dramas nearly as much as he does in his books. It would be fascinating, for example, to hear what “a weapon that can rewrite history” sounds like, and how it impacts the way the story is told. Miles, Stevens, and Lock certainly have the talent to pull it off. But beyond a few tantalizing moments here and there, Miles opted to keep the narrative structure of his audio dramas predominantly linear. This traditional approach certainly helps make the audio dramas accessible, and I can’t fault Miles for wanting to do that. However, in a series that is largely about questioning the nature of history and narrative it still feels like a missed opportunity. (In our upcoming interview, Alan Stevens hints that we may see this change dramatically in the final releases.)

Part 3: A Tale of Two Audio Serials

So you’re intrigued. Now comes the loaded question: where should you start? If you want the whole story, start with BBV’s The Eleven-Day Empire. But is that the best answer? Let’s look more closely at the continuities and differences between the two serials.

BBV: The Faction Paradox Protocols

The first 6 Faction Paradox audio dramas were released by BBV under the Protocols line. These plays were directed by Nigel Fairs and featured Suzanne Proctor as Cousin Justine, Emma Kilbey as Cousin Eliza, and Caroline Burns-Cook as Lolita. The episodes were released in pairs, so that every two CDs delivered a complete chapter of the ongoing story. They are:

The Eleven-Day Empire / The Shadow Play: The story of Lolita’s first attack and Justine’s rite-of-passage, set in the Faction’s home territory (the titular Eleven-Day Empire). The Sontarans, a militaristic race of clones from numerous Doctor Who episodes, are featured.

Sabbath Dei / In the Year of the Cat: Justine and Eliza visit London in 1762, becoming embroiled in court politics, the Star Chamber, the Hellfire Club, and Lolita’s more than royal ambitions. The Peking Homunculi from the Doctor Who serial The Talons of Weng-Chiang are featured.

Movers / A Labyrinth of Histories: Eliza attempts to rescue Justine from a prison world of the Great Houses, and Justine experiences flashbacks of her first encounter with the Faction. The prison world is very likely a take on Shada from the unfinished Tom Baker story from Doctor Who, Shada.

Each 2-cd chapter has a different historical setting, period style, and cast of supporting characters. Only Justine, Eliza, and Lolita appear in all three chapters. Each chapter also incorporates an element of Doctor Who lore to draw fans: Sontarans in the first pair, Peking Homunculi in the second, and a thinly-veiled Shada in the third. The Protocols were discontinued prematurely in 2004 when BBV shelved its entire audio drama line.

The BBV productions were diamonds in the rough. The scripts were written to Miles’s usual high standard, with innovative concepts, dry wit, and an epic scope. Nigel Fairs, who cast, directed, and scored the dramas, threw himself into his work. With a few minor exceptions, the cast was strong and gave inspired performances.

Why then diamonds “in the rough”? Fairs was working with limited means, which had audible consequences for the series. Since his budget did not allow for casting established stars, Fairs drew primarily on emerging talents. Budget pressure also kept casts small and necessitated double-casting.

That said, good casting doesn’t require stars, it requires the right people in the right roles. With few exceptions, that’s what Fairs got. I want to make special mention of Suzanne Proctor and Emma Kilbey, who originated the roles of Cousin Justine and Cousin Eliza. Proctor played both sides of Justine’s personality – the self-doubting acolyte and the driven messiah – with grit and intelligence. More than anyone else, it was Proctor’s performance that first riveted me to the series and kept me coming back. Some have contested the appropriateness of Proctor’s accent (a beautiful Lancastrian lilt) to the role of a 19th century witch. As an American, I confess I have no idea of how fitting Proctor’s accent was for the role. What I can say is that both Proctor’s voice and accent carried a bewitching folk flavor that really suited Justine. I have to confess I was completely smitten. I’m happily married to my soulmate, a Thai woman from exotic New Jersey. But in my next life, let me wed a Lancastrian.

Download audio file (05_Eliza_meets_the_Faction_for_the_first_time.mp3)

(Audio clip: Eliza encounters Godfather Morlock and Faction Paradox for the first time while on a youthful ramble with her friend in rural England. An excerpt from The Faction Paradox Protocols #5: Movers.)

Emma Kilbey arguably had the harder task in bringing Eliza to life. A “straight man” supporting character whose primary role is to provide the listeners a foothold in a strange world, Eliza’s narrative purpose often threatens to overwhelm her dramatic potential. Kilbey avoided this by leavening Eliza’s scripted cynicism with savvy and world-weary gravitas.

Download audio file (02_Playing_For_Time.mp3)

(Audio clip: Eliza matches wits with the enigmatic Sabbath over a game of tarot cards. An excerpt from The Faction Paradox Protocols #3: Sabbath Dei.)

Other noteworthy performances included Ellis Pike as the meticulous, grandfatherly Godfather Morlock, an actor and a role that were pivotal in launching the audio dramas and contributed greatly to their arcane yet humous tone. I was very sorry to see both the actor and the role vanish from the series. Jackie Skarvellis is a hoot as Mary Culver, a saucy mix of extra-dimensional power, prophet, and salt-of-the-earth prostitute. And Kate Dyson’s calm, calculating Demetra Kein is a genuine antagonist to be reckoned with. The actor who surprised me most, however, was Saul Jaffe as Sabbath. Given the character’s enigmatic and imposing name, I was expecting an actor more along the lines of a Magic Bullet star: Gabriel Woolf or Philip Madoc, say; someone with an imposing, cultured, and deep voice. Jaffe’s voice is pitched high and youthful, but he gives Sabbath a thoughtful cunning that leaves you with little doubt as to who is the smartest man in the room. I began a doubter, but was completely won over by the end. A pleasant surprise, and another character I’m sorry to say has not been retained into the Magic Bullet run.

The roles I was least taken with were the double-cast ones. In the interest of full disclosure, while I recognize double-casting is often a financial necessity, as a listener I loathe it. In my experience, very few actors can disguise their voices to the point that they are unrecognizable. And unless you are doing comedy, where knowing the different voices are coming from one actor is part of the joke (a la many a Firesign Theatre or Monty Python sketch), it can really destroy the fourth wall. Emma Kilbey was called upon to voice both Eliza and Godmother Quelch in the first two BBV releases, which she carried off brilliantly on both counts. She was less successful playing Eliza’s aged Aunt Fiora in the last two BBV plays. For whatever reason, young women voicing old women, whether on the radio, T.V., or in the movies, never convince me. Having Linda Bartram play so many supporting roles with cartoonish dispositions (Shuncucker, the Lady / Annabel) also made the Faction Paradox universe seem that much smaller.

As the director / musician / sound designer, Nigel Fairs did more than anyone else to give the first Faction Paradox audios their distinctive sound. As a director, Fairs got rock solid performances from his players, keeping them closely in tune with Miles’s character descriptions. Fairs did play up the farcical elements of the first two BBV releases, The Eleven-Day Empire and The Shadow Play, more broadly than he would in the sequels. The reasons behind this will be detailed in my upcoming interview with Fairs, but the change in tone that followed was welcome.

As a musician, Fairs provided Faction Paradox with its most memorable theme, a haunting calliope / harpsichord melody that captures the series’ dark carnival feel. It too underwent some significant changes over the course of BBV’s 6 releases. I would agree with general opinion that the first soft-rock iteration wasn’t successful, but the somber dirge in the final two episodes remains, for me, the definitive Faction anthem. I like Alistair Lock’s theme for the Magic Bullet series, which calls up vistas of desert wasteland under alien skies. But as good as it is, Lock’s intro / outro music could just as easily be used for an episode of Stargate, or any other Egyptian-tinged sci-fi epic. There’s nothing particularly “Faction Paradox” specific about it, whereas Fairs’s witchy tune couldn’t be used for anything else.

Fairs’s sound work on this series isn’t flawless. Proctor and Kilbey overload their microphones while screaming in an Eleven Day Empire sequence. Lolita’s infant child sounds like a canned sound effect, since the same baby crying track is looped for every appearance. A woman says “Oh” in a background murmur loop from Sabbath Dei so loudly and regularly that anticipation of it becomes a form of Chinese water torture. Generally speaking, Fairs’s scenes never achieve the layered aural richness that gave Alistair Lock’s later work on the series such epic sweep. But as Frog-mouth said in ZBS productions’ Ruby 3, sometimes “low tech does the job”. What Fairs’s sound work lacked in polish it made up for in inspiration, and I mean that sincerely. His shadow weapon sound effects, created by reversing clanging kitchen pans, have more visceral bite than Lock’s synth versions. (Alan Stevens has since written to inform me that Lock’s shadow weapons effects are derived from the sound of a whip-crack.) His jangling Peking Homunculi, stirring like broken clockwork, are hilarious and eerie.

Download audio file (07_Verbal_Jousting.mp3)

(Audio clip: Justine uses her shadow weapon to dismantle a self-effacing yet self-assured Peking Homunculus that is doing its level best to kill her. An excerpt from The Faction Paradox Protocols #3: Sabbath Dei.)

Rough-hewn it may be, but Nigel Fairs’s sound work has real character, and in this respect it sometimes surpasses Lock’s. It is largely due to Fairs’s hard work and smart innovations that the Faction Paradox Protocols, for all their rough edges, still sound so compelling.

BBV’s Faction Paradox Protocols are not the slickest or most lavish productions. But there’s an undeniable spark to them, and while their delivery is a bit patchwork, their content is always effective and enjoyable. My recommendation would be not to skip them.

Magic Bullet: The True History of Faction Paradox

In 2004, Magic Bullet released their first entry in The True History of Faction Paradox, Coming to Dust. And there was great rejoicing. It hadn’t been at all clear that the audio dramas would continue in any form after BBV ceased production. I actually considered the possibility that Big Finish or Magic Bullet could pick up the series, and even suggested it on the old Outpost Gallifrey message boards. I never expected it to happen, though. We owe Alan Stevens a debt of thanks for taking a chance on the property and giving it a second life.

Although it followed on from the events of the first series and kept the Protocol’s “two CDs per chapter” format, the True History series was set up to stand on its own. So far the following chapters have been released:

Coming to Dust / The Ship of a Billion Years: British occultists summon Justine and Eliza to the Naples of 1763 to investigate a demonic Ape being exhibited there. They are soon swept up in a search for Faction Paradox genetic banks and into a confrontation with the Osirian court, a race of space-faring Egyptian gods. In the shadows, Sutekh (Set) is ready to strike . . .

Body Politic / Words from Nine Divinites: Sutekh claims the ship of Ra with disastrous consequences, Lolita expands her powerbase among the Great Houses, and Eliza lives the myth of Set and Osiris.

Ozymandias / ????: The forthcoming conclusion to the series, which Alan Stevens promises will be apocalyptic.

Whereas the Protocols were open-ended until cancellation, the True History is scripted to be a finite 6 CD series. As such it is less episodic in nature than the Protocols were, with its overarching villains and themes (Sutekh, Egyptian mythology, resurrection) remaining stable over the course of the 6 CDs rather than shifting every 2. Essentially the Magic Bullet series has taken an “Osirian turn”, with the space-faring race of Egyptian gods assuming an important ongoing role. If you are familiar with the classic myth of Set’s murder of his brother Osiris, you are in for a retelling like none you’ve heard before.

Download audio file (08__The_Door_Is_Opening…_.mp3)

(Audio Clip: Sutekh lays claim to what is rightfully his in The True History of Faction Paradox #2: The Ship of a Billion Years.)

The change of production house had significant consequences for the Faction Paradox audios. The most obvious one was the recasting of Justine (Wanda Opalinska), Eliza (Jane Lesley), and Lolita (Jet Tattersall), and the scuttling of nearly all other recurring characters from the BBV run. The reasons behind the recasting will be addressed by Alan Stevens in our upcoming interview. Here the point is qualitative – how did recasting impact the listener’s experience?

Hearing a new voice take on a familiar role always takes getting used to. There are two ways a director can approach the problem. 1. Cast people who sound as close as possible to the originals or 2. cast people who sound different, but capture the spirit of the character in their own way. To my mind, there is only one right answer to the problem. As Brandon Routh discovered in the ill-fated Superman Returns, portraying Superman in the manner of Christopher Reeve doesn’t recreate Reeve’s Superman or pay homage to it: it results in a not-quite Reeve’s Superman. (Routh am Reeve Bizarro!) As French philosopher Gilles Deleuze would say, “make maps, not tracings”, or create, don’t imitate. If the new actors playing Justine, Eliza, and Lolita were to succeed, they would have to do so on their own merit. Fortunately for us Alan Stevens recognized this, and he didn’t cast sound-alikes.

Wanda Opalinska brings a new level of steely poise to Justine. An actress with the uncanny ability to convey stature through her voice, Opalinska does full justice to the harder persona Justine has evolved into. She convinces from the moment you first hear her. Download audio file (08_Eliza_is_summoned.mp3)

(Audio clip: Cousin Justine, summoned by the Society of Sigismondo di Rimini, makes her debut in the True History of Faction Paradox #1: Coming to Dust.)

Given her later entry into the series, Opalinska does not have the opportunity to portray the younger, less assured Justine that Proctor originated. Justine has evolved beyond that phase, having already adopted the mantle of avenging angel. This is hardly Opalinska’s fault, but the fact remains that the older Justine just isn’t as accessible as her younger self. Despite Opalinska’s strong performance, I would find it difficult to care quite so much for Justine if I hadn’t heard Proctor portray her beginnings. Those who come into the True History without knowledge of The Eleven-Day Empire will also be at a loss to understand the source or meaning of Justine’s strange powers.

Where Opalinska quickly made Justine her own, Jane Lesley as Eliza grew on me more slowy. In Coming to Dust she lost the world-weariness that enriched Kilbey’s performance of the character, becoming more quippy sidekick than laconic narrative foil. In The Ship of a Billion Years, however, she enriched her portrayal of Eliza with some nice emotional nuance, after tragedy rendered the character more empathetic than she’d ever been. It wasn’t easy to go from Kilbey to Lesley, but now that I have, I do like where Lesley is taking the role.

Of the three characters, Jet Tattersall’s Lolita sounds and acts most like the original version (Caroline Burns-Cooke’s). Tattersall’s delivery is less arch and more lambent than Cooke’s, and so unaffected that any similarity of interpretation should be put down to synchronicity rather than mimicry. To be perfectly frank, I found her performance even more natural than the original actor’s. Only the most anal-retentive will be put-off by this particular recasting; others may not even notice it.

The move from BBV to Magic Bullet also resulted in noticeable qualitative changes. To get down to brass tacks, it’s evident that the True History worked with a larger budget than the Protocols. Alan Stevens of Magic Bullet was in a position to hire a larger cast bolstered by many veterans of British sci-fi television. This lead to a number of memorable performances, particularly from actors with commanding baritones. Gabriel Woolf reprises his role as Sutekh from the Doctor Who classic, Pyramids of Mars, and his voice drips with all the old sibilant menace. Philip Madoc, another Who veteran, does a fine turn as the War King, a decadent schemer and tactician who finds himself out of his depth. Isla Blair (Ellainya / Merytra) gives an impassioned, surprisingly empathetic performance as the half-demonic leader of the ape-like Malakh. Peter Halliday’s Anubis effectively blends whimsy, scientific curiosity, and quiet dignity with a Jackal’s head. Julian Glover makes Upuat the Oscar Wilde of Egyptian mythology: gossipy, vain, fashionable, and witty. Peter Miles . . . but you get the idea. There’s really an embarrassment of riches here. None of these stars reinvent themselves, all playing character types they mastered long ago. But that mastery is very much in evidence. And if you don’t know these actors by name yet, you will realize why they are stars when you hear them.

One name I didn’t recognize but want to make special mention of is Patricia Merrick as Astarte Marne. This is a small role, defined by quiet defiance and fierce maternal longing. But although Astarte never so much as raises her voice, Merrick gives her an emotional weight even the gods of the series don’t possess. Performances like these impress on me all over again the care with which Magic Bullet puts their casts together.

It’s true that not every supporting role is outstanding. Francesco Calabretta’s (Don Escuro) frantic attempt at ethnic comic relief falls flat in Coming to Dust, and Chris Tranchell (Mortega), though gifted with a classically handsome voice, sounds more like a classically handsome BBC news announcer than a Time Lord in Body Politic and Words from Nine Divinities. Tranchell’s neutral baritone makes me feel like the play will be interrupted for a breaking story every time Mortega makes an appearance. But these are, I admit, minor quibbles.

Magic Bullet also brought greater sophistication to sound design in their Faction Paradox audios. Or rather, they brought in Alistair Lock, which is pretty much the same thing. Lock is one of the most accomplished sound designers ever to work in British commercial audio drama, and he is much beloved by connoisseurs for his early work at Big Finish. The phrase “cinema for the ears” gets abused quite a lot, but in terms of Alistair Lock’s work the term is apt. Lock brought a level of craftsmanship, nuance, and a sense of epic scale to the series that it hadn’t previously witnessed. When Lock conjures up a miniature sun at the heart of a spaceship, or has the winds of the desert force open the gates of the gods, you believe it. My favorite sound effect to spring from Lock’s mind, however, was the Royal telepathic speech of the Osirian court. Authoritative divine gibberish that flies past your ears like a dense stream of code, the effect is surprising when it hits you and weirdly credible.

Download audio file (05__Dont_You_Think_Cat-Heads_Are_So_Passe__.mp3)

(Audio Clip: Justine and Upuat attend the royal court of the Osirians in The True History of Faction Paradox #2: The Ship of a Billion Years.)

The result of Lock’s work is that the stakes seem higher, the scope broader, the threats more credible, and the tale more vivid than ever before. There is a majesty and richness to what Lock does that is hard to match.

In conclusion, you can certainly enjoy the True History, with its distinctive Egyptian stylings, impressive cast, and technical excellence, all on its own. It is the most impressive iteration of Faction Paradox on audio, and for pure professionalism I can recommend it without reservation. But I do have a weakness for the Protocols. The BBV releases are rougher, but what they lack in polish they make up for with imagination and verve.

Of course, this is a false problem. There is no reason to choose one series over the other. I strongly advise you to treat your ears and your mind to both.

Next week: An interview with Nigel Fairs, director / actor / sound designer / composer for the BBV Faction Paradox Protocols audio dramas.

Greetings all,

My wife recently had surgery for appendicitis, and between doing my work, taking care of her, and looking after my 4 year old son, I’m just too beat to write from scratch this week. My essay on Gordon Bok’s “Peter Kagan and the Wind” will therefore be postponed to next week. However, I’m not too tired to type up someone else’s words, so today I’m proud to present a lost piece of radio drama history.

After my review of his dramatic adaptation of Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” went up, Erik Bauersfeld sent me a thoughtful and fascinating email response. Noting my interest in his cooperative 1984 Hörspiel USA project between Berkeley, California Pacifica station KPFA and German station WDR Köln, Mr. Bauersfeld kindly volunteered to send me information about it. The envelope he sent contained a 1984 copy of the KPFA’s Folio, which included summaries of all the Hörspiel USA dramas and an introductory article by Bauersfeld himself.

This was, of course, much too interesting to just file away. I contacted Bauersfeld and requested his permission to post his essay here, which he generously granted. Together with the show summaries, it presents a window onto a fascinating and all-too-brief bridge between the worlds of American radio drama and German Hörspiel. The dramas showcase an impressive level of dramatic invention and intellectual caliber, demonstrating philosophical depth and artistic boldness. While I share Bauersfeld’s regret that this international cross-pollination was cut short all too quickly, these nine broadcasts alone are an impressive accomplishment. They deserve wider recognition, and more than that, re-release.

I want to make it clear from the outset that this article only reprints Bauersfeld’s essay and the show summaries from the KPFA Folio issue. The words that follow are not my own, and I do not claim them. Furthermore, this post does not contain audio files of any of the actual shows. I only wish it did, as I’m dying to hear them myself. Nevertheless, I encourage any audio drama enthusiast to read on, and audio drama producers even more so. The ideas packed into these shows are rich, fertile, and inspiring, demonstrating even today how much further the artistic boundaries of audio drama can be pushed.

Again, my deepest gratitude to Erik Bauersfeld for allowing me to reprint his words and bring attention to this intriguing chapter of radio drama history.

The Project
by Erik Bauersfeld

Hörspiel USA all began when Robert Goss sent me his translation of a radio play about Helen of Troy written by Wolfgang Hildesheimer, with a note about doing it on KPFA. Hildesheimer is a distinguished Swiss writer, known for his radio work, novels, criticisms, and plays . . . but it was a long script, and I took months getting to it. But it took only minutes after reading the first several pages to get Robert on the phone. Of course, I told him, we must do it. But, I added, not as an amateur production with no funds for actors, directors or technicians.

The next day, I called the Goethe Institute in San Francisco and spoke to Ernst Schuermann. Talking over lunch, he told me he thought the Institute would be interested in funding the play. “But what about a series of Hörspiel instead of one play?” he suggested. And from there the project took off.

Robert Goss went to Köln, Germany, and then spent several months at Westdeutscher Rundfunk listening to over 90 Hörspiele and selecting thirty to choose from. Following that, I received an invitation by the Goethe Institute and WDR to visit radio stations in Berlin, Munich and Köln. It was at WDR Köln, with Paul Schultes, Klaus Schöning and Klaus Mehrlönder that the project was designed.

After that, we sent a series of applications to the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts for additional funds. In addition, WDR became interested in sending several of their directors to San Francisco to assist in the productions of works which they had originally directed. This resulted in two co-productions, Five-Man Humanity and Monologue, Terry Jo. In turn, WDR became interested in finding and commissioning writers and other radio artists in the San Francisco area for productions at WDR, Köln. At least half a dozen such commissions have already resulted. Thus began a major international exchange of radio art between WDR Köln and KPFA, the former’s first such project with American broadcasting.

The result of all this, our first series, Hörspiel USA will be broadcast on KPFA this month. Nine programs, ninety minutes each; six works translated and produced here in Berkeley (at Fantasy Studios) and six original WDR productions: in all, twelve Hörspiel never before heard in the United States.

During the two years of preparation, Ernst Schuermann was transferred to Munich where he now heads the main office of the Goethe Institute. He continues to support the project. Dr. Manfred Triesch, the new director of San Francisco’s Goethe Institute, has brought his own ideas, encouragement, and assistance to the project. At the Institute Library, a center is being developed for Hörspiel works: tapes of our own productions, plus a large collection of original WDR productions are available, as well as scripts and publications. Plans for a continuation of Hörspiel USA this coming year – with emphasis on the exchange of radio artists – are already underway.

Another development has had consequences of more national importance to those of us interested in radio drama – audiences and artists alike. With the coming of television and commercialism in broadcasting in this country, radio drama, which began so impressively, was literally wiped out. But in Europe it continued to develop into a fine art, ranging from the most accessible to the most experimental. For the first time, the United States was represented at the International Geneva Conference of Radio Drama. Four radio artists, Everett Frost of WGH, Boston; Yuri Rasovsky, from Chicago; Dean Boal from National Public Radio; and myself all attended. This, too, was an outcome of our project, through the efforts of Ernst Schuermann at the Goethe Institute and Dr. Schultes and Klaus Schöning at WDR. This extraordinary gathering of radio drama artists culminated with a recommendation by the European Broadcasting Union to our government for increased financial support for radio drama in this country.

Thus, a “regional, national, and international bridge of connections,” to use Klaus Schöning’s phrase, has been set up for the development and exchange of radio art. And even more: these developments and our current series have given KPFA an international status, as Charles Amirkhanian, our Music Director, already has throughout Europe for his artistry in sound poetry and contemporary music. During this past year, three programs were produced and broadcast by Klaus Schöning at WDR Köln on our work here at KPFA. Unlike in this country, radio is reviewed daily in the newspapers of Europe, and our work was fully and enthusiastically reported.

Erik Bauersfeld is director of the KPFA Drama and Literature Department.

Here ends Bauersfeld’s article. I’m attaching the original Broadcast schedule for Hörspiel USA below.

Broadcast Schedule, October 1984

Program One, Mon. Oct. 1, 8:00 pm

During October, KPFA, in association with Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln (West German Radio, Cologne) presents a series of nine programs to introduce our audience to the art of Hörspiel. this project, initiated by by funding from the Goethe Institute of San Francisco, and later by the National Endowment for the Arts, includes six classic Hörspiele, translated and produced Berkeley, and six original WDR productions. Two of the works in the series were co-produced by WDR Köln and KPFA (see article, page 1). Kalus Schöning, Dramaturg and producer at WDR Köln, was largely responsible for the development of this project, and on this first program, in conversation with Project Director Erik Bauersfeld, he discusses the art of Hörspiel in West Germany with many examples from its history, before and after the Nazi occupation of German radio. The program will follow with two complete works:

Hörspiel: An Introduction by Klaus Schöning. (WDR Köln production)

Five Man Humanity by Ernst Jandl & Friederike Mayröcker (produced in English)

Translated and directed by Robert Goss in consultation with Klaus Mehrlönder, director of the original WDR production. The two directors introduce the work with a discussion of its meaning and its production here at WDR. This brief work (17 minutes) is a classic in the WDR repertory, becoming in recent years a favorite with school children. Sound poets Jandl and Mayröcker have combined their abstract acoustical art with the cogent theme of militarization. In a Mother Goose-style, five men are born, grow up, educated, conscripted, imprisoned, tried, executed, and born again. The Bay area cast includes Leo Downey, Jack Shearer, Sigrid Wurschmidt, Jude Haukom, Craig Bray, David Frank, Steve LeGrand, Wallace Gorell, David Parr, Tyson Thomas, Ethan Eubanks, Jeffrey Johnson, and Daniel Goss. The work was produced at Fantasy Studios with technical production by Danny Kopelson.

Wind and Sea by Peter Handke (original WDR production)

Handke is one of the most prominent European writers and has produced several Hörspiel. In this brief and largely acoustical work, Handke directed and contributed the sounds of his own breathing. This original WDR production is introduced with a discussion by Klaus Schöning and Erik Bauersfeld.

Program Two, Sun. Oct. 7, 8:30 pm

The First Casualty of the Trojen War by Wolfgang Hildesheimer (produced in English).

Translated and directed by Robert Goss. Wolfgang Hildesheimer, one of Europe’s most prominent authors, has written many dramas for radio. Historically, he is one of the earliest writers for radio, and is still active. In his typically humorous style, this play (Das Opfer Helene) Helen of Troy tells the real story of how the Trojan War began and how unsuccessful she was in preventing it. A discussion of the play and its production introduces this program. The cast of Bay Area performers is as follows:

Helen – Hope Alexander-Willis

Menelaus – Jack Shearer

Hermione – Lorri Holt

Paris – Julian Lopez-Morillas

The play was produced at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley.

Program Three, Mon. Oct. 8, 8:00 pm

Monologue: Terry Jo by Max Bense & Ludwig Harig (produced in English).

Directed by Klaus Schöning. A co-production with WDR Köln. Mr. Schöning directed the original WDR production of this story about an American family murdered during a vacation cruise in the Caribbean. Their young daughter, Terry Jo, escaped on a raft and when rescued several days later, speaks incessantly and incoherently about the traumatic experience. We also hear the voices of others, taken from the testimony of the actual case. As Terry Jo becomes more clear, the others become more contradictory and obscure. The incident was reported in a French newspaper, from which the authors composed the piece. This is an exceptional example of a Hörspiel technique, which presents an objective and unsensational acoustical account of horrific events in daily life. Silences, edited pauses, and restraint are dramatic devices with some implication for survival in the contemporary world. The cast of Bay Area actors is as follows:

Terry Jo – Sigrid Wurschmidt

Voices – Robert Goss, Shabaka, Gus Johnson, Cyril Clayton, Nanos Valaoritis, Jenny Sterlin,David Parr, Steve LeGrand, Jerry Cornelius, Morgan Upton, Charles Dean, Elizabeth Keller, Pamela Marsh, and Erik Bauersfeld.

This work was produced at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley with technical production by Danny Kopelson.

Program Four, Sun. Oct. 14, 7:00 pm

Breakfast Conversations in Miami by Reinhard Lettau (produced in English).

Directed by R.G. Davis from a translation by Reinhard Lettau and Julie Prandi. Additional editing of the text by Robert Hurwitt. Directing and production assistance by Maria Gilardin. In this political satire, six former Latin American dictators meet in Miami and discuss their experiences as heads of state over a series of breakfasts at the airport hotel. Their interests shift from such matters as protection from kidnappers, popularity, and dealing with opposition parties to avant gardism, soap operas, sleeping late, and finding the “path to the inside” via cosmic thoughts and deep breathing. The cast of Bay Area performers is as follows:

Narrator – Pamela Marsh

Chairman – H. Robert Haswell

Mimosa – Charles Dean

Professor – James Cranna

Rosa – Morgan Upton

Schneider – Gail Chugg

Torrijos & Cellini – Don Sortor

Wessin – Bruce Mackey

The program was produced at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. Technical production by Danny Kopelson. Editing by Robert Howe. Sound design and production by Erik Bauersfeld.

Program Five, Mon. Oct. 15, 8:00 pm

Gertrude by Wolfgang Schiffer & Charles Dörr. (produced in English).

Directed by Oscar Eustis from the translation by Robert Goss. Consulting director for the production was the author and director of the original WDR Hörspiel, Wolfgang Schiffer. Gertrude had been admitted to a halfway house for rehabilitation. Most doctors diagnosed her as an incurable schizophrenic. Listening to the radio was one of her ardent pastimes and she began a series of letters to WDR Köln, where two producers took an interest in her and began to document her struggles to find a new place in society. This attention brought a new meaning and encouragement to her life. Then the program was completed and Gertrude was left, once again, to find her way alone. This original Hörspiel is an outstanding example of documentary used in a dramatic artistic form. Director Eustis tried, in this adaptation, to preserve some of the original documentation. The voice of Gertrude and the people in her life are heard, and our actors carry on the story. The program is introduced with a discussion of how this was accomplished. In the cast are:

Gertrude – Abigail Booream

Producer – Wolfgang Schiffer

Other voices – Drew Eshelman, Gus Johnson, Laural Ollstein, David Parr, Jenny Sterlin

The program was recorded on locations in San Francisco and Berkeley, with technical assistance by Karin Brocco; technical production at Fantasy Studios by Danny Kopelson. Music by Maggi Payne. Director of production for radio: Erik Bauersfeld.

Program Six, Sun. Oct. 21, 8:30 pm

Roaratorio by John Cage (original WDR production).

Radio Play Text by John Cage. This is the first broadcast of Roaratorio in its entirety, in the United States, and one of the most complex works for radio ever produced. It contains a grand total of 2293 sound effects, all referred to in the texts selected from James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. On this program, we first hear a discussion of the work with WDR producer and editor of Roaratorio, Klaus Schöning, including portions of a conversation with John Cage, and his address at Donaueschingen in October, 1979, on having received the Karl Sczuka Prize for the work. The first broadcast at WDR, Köln was October 22, 1979 with the following credits:

Voice – John Cage

Singer – Joe Heaney

Musicians – Seamus Ennis, Paddy Glackin, Matt Mallow, Peadher Mercier, Mell Mercier

Realization – John Cage & John David Fullemann

Cooperation – IRCAM Paris

Editor – Klaus Schöning

Assistant – Peter Behrensen

In this coming season, the Roaratorio will be staged for the Merce Cunningham Ballet Company. Two remarks by John Cage may help orient our audience for this broadcast. First, regarding the text: “I hope that Roaratorio will introduce people to the pleasures of Finnegan’s Wake when it is still on the side of poetry and chaos rather than something analyzed and known to be safe and law-abiding.” Secondly: “I had long come to the conclusion that the purpose of music, and I trust of Hörspiel, is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.”

Program Seven, Mon. Oct. 22, 8:00 pm

On Reading Orwell by Mauricio Kagel (original WDR production).

Produced and broadcast this year, 1984 at WDR Köln in recognition of George Orwell’s novel about the same year. In Orwell’s science fiction vision, 1984 was dominated by a Big Brother who altered language technologically in ways that reinforced his dictatorship. Kagel’s text consists entirely of such words, a meta-language. For example, two words connection and secured, become connecticured; unification and clearness become unificearness. These words are spoken and chanted. The sounds represent all the acoustical events mentioned in Orwell’s book, in a form of the daily indoctrination of employees in 1984′s Ministry of Truth: “Hate broadcasts . . . having the goal of keeping ideological loyalty fresh by insistent repetition.” Kagel is perhaps the most inventive and prolific of all Hörspiel artists. His works in all details, recording, directing, editing, composing and producing, are by himself. His work is that of the true ‘auteur’ of radio art. The program includes a discussion of Kagel’s work and a conversation between him and Klaus Schöning, WDR director and producer.

Radio by Ferdinand Kriwet (original WDR production).

This Hörspiel was originally in the series Acoustica International, co-produced by WDR, Köln, French Radio, and Sveriges Riksradio, Sweden. It won the Primios Ondas Prize in 1983. Kriwet is a master of radio collage and Radio draws its composition from broadcasts and archives around the world. “Voices that continually surround us, speaking, singing, buzzing shortwave; a concentration of what is on the air, day in and day out.” The program is introduced by Klaus Schöning, with portions of taped remarks by the composer about his work.

Program Eight, Sun. Oct. 28, 7:00 pm

On tonight’s program, we present two Hörspiele by American writers and members of the international artists’ movement, Fluxus. Both works were commissioned and produced by WDR, Köln.

Natural Assemblages and the True Crow by Allison Knowles (original WDR production)

Allison Knowles won the 1982 Karl Sczuka Prize for her Hörspiel Bean Sequences. On this program, we hear her second work. It is based on her 1982 poetic journal, which explores the subconscious world of childhood. The sounds accompanying the text (read in German and English) were performed by the composer using toys and other reminiscences of childhood. The program is introduced by Klaus Schöning, WDR producer and director, in a discussion with the artist about her work.

Hsin Hsin Minh by George Brecht (original WDR production).

Born in 1925 in Halfway, Oregon, Brecht has been living in Köln since 1972. This is his first radio piece and it is based on the the text from one of the great poetical-philosophical works of Zen Buddhism, Hsin Hsin Minh. The author is the Third Chinese Patriarch, Seng Ts’an, who died in the year 606. “Return to the origin, and the sense of things will announce itself to you; hunt for it in objects and you will miss it.” The program is introduced by a discussion with Klaus Schöning, about the unusual composition of the work, which is performed in four languages: English, French, German, and Chinese.

Program Nine, Mon. Oct. 29, 8:00 pm

The Other and I (Die Andere und Ich) by Gönter Eich (produced in English).

An American family touring Europe have detoured on a hot Sunday afternoon in August, to swim at a resort on the north Italian coast. On the way they pass a desolate fishing village. An old woman stands at the foot of a bridge, watching them pass. Ellen, the mother, sees her and later is drawn back to find her. When she does, she enters a world and life from which there is no escape. Gönter Eich (1907-1972) is the mot famous of all German writers for radio. His work remains more classic that the “New Hörspiel” of the past several programs, but his style is poetic, full of imagery and themes that derive largely from German Romanticism. In 1953, he married the Austrian poet and novelist Ilse Aichinger. A year earlier he was awarded the Hörspiel Prize of the War Blind (one of th emost prestigious awards in West Germany in the 1950′s). Eich explored lost identities in his plays – lost identities between people, between words and their “external correlatives,” and between the living and the dead. The Other and I (Die Andere und Ich) is just such a typical Eich theme. Ellen Harland becomes lost or captured in the body and life of another woman. She cannot return to her own self and her comfortable world, but must live out the whole life of an impoverished woman in a desolate fishing village on the coast of Italy. Directed and produced by Erik Bauersfeld.

The cast of Bay Area performers is as follows:

Ellen Harland / Camilla – Winifred Mann

John Harland – Morgan Upton

Mother – Shirley Jac-Wagner

Father – H. Robert Haswell

Giovanni – Rick Cimino

Philomena – Lorri Holt

Antonio – Mark Rousseau

Aunt – Barbara Oliver

Recorded and produced at Fantasy Studios, Berkeley.

4 out of 10

A flawed curiosity, the Mind’s Eye production of Kafka’s surreal, tragicomic tale of the salesman-turned-cockroach is notable for a striking voice effect and an outstanding performance by Erik Bauersfeld. Listening to him, you’ll believe a cockroach can talk and shudder with disgust and sympathy. It’s a shame the rest of the cast doesn’t measure up.

From the short story “Die Verwandlung” by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915.

Adapted and directed by: Erik Bauersfeld

The Mind’s Eye, 1982.

Language: English.

Availability: Out of print and difficult to find. Try Ebay, Amazon.com sellers, or Abebooks.

Cassette, 40 minutes.

What will they say when they see me?
- Gregor Samsa

Well, what can they say? If they get upset then it’s no longer your problem, if they take it calmly then all you have to worry about is catching the 8 o’clock train.
- the Voice

Now that the company and its works have all but vanished, it’s hard to believe there was a time in the 1980s when The Mind’s Eye was one of America’s biggest audio drama producers. They had mainstream distribution through chains like Waldenbooks and catalogs like Wireless, and they published an expansive, ambitious catalog of adaptations of classic stories. Their flagship title was a 12 cassette production of The Lord of the Rings, which aired on NPR. Since the BBC drama wasn’t available Stateside for years, the Mind’s Eye version was the only game in town for American Tolkien-lovers. This was very fortunate for The Mind’s Eye, because their low-rent edition of the fantasy epic was much inferior to the BBC’s. (But if the idea of Sam Gamgee sounding like Smurfette appeals, by all means seek it out. Yes, they actually cast Lucille Bliss, the voice of Smurfette, as Sam.) Unfortunately, the same can be said about most of their output. The Mind’s Eye routinely produced mediocre work marked by low calibre performances.

Although I was already underwhelmed by the Mind’s Eye back in the 1980′s, I became intrigued by their decision to adapt Franz Kafka’s classic tale, The Metamorphosis. The story of salesman Gregor Samsa waking up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant cockroach seemed an unlikely choice for audio drama. So much of the story depends on narration, after all, since the protagonist is more fixated on family and duty than describing his strange condition.

But if anyone could pull it off, it would be writer / director / actor Erik Bauersfeld, who produced many adaptations of strange tales for his Black Mass radio series. Bauersfeld has had an extensive career in audio drama, anchored by a long tenure from 1962 to 2004 with Pacifica Radio’s KPFA in Berkeley, California. Much of his radio work is frustratingly difficult to get a hold of, since many of his works have never been published. Given my own interests in the German scene, I’m particularly intrigued by a crossover German / American series that he spearheaded called the H?rspiel/USA Project. (If anyone knows how to obtain copies, please let me know.) Most would probably recognize Bauersfeld for voicing Jabba the Hutt’s toadie Bib Fortuna and Arabic-amphibian Admiral Ackbar in the Star Wars films. Apparently Bauersfeld was also the first voice to be recorded for Yoda. ?(Bauersfeld has since informed me that although he was recorded for Yoda, a role he enjoyed because the character was a philosopher, Frank Oz was recorded first. ?I gather Bauersfeld’s version was more sage and less comic.)

Bauersfeld has worked closely with some of the best in the audio business, including sound design legend Randy Thom. Outside of his own work, Bauersfeld is notable for mentoring a young Tom Lopez (“Meatball Fulton” of ZBS fame). See Roger Gregg’s NATF interview with Lopez for more on the ZBS director’s relationship with Bauersfeld. Hats off to Bauersfeld for that. If only more elder statesmen of audio drama would follow his example and encourage proteges; too many seem content to whine narcissistically about the low quality of young writers and the dire future of the field. Holding the occasional “master class” is fine, but nothing beats sustained mentoring.

With a pedigree like that (and this bio is much abbreviated), you would expect Bauersfeld to turn in an excellent performance as Gregor Samsa. And he does. His nervous, hesitant voice captures Samsa’s guilt, self-effacement, and Kafkaesque anxieties about being the sole provider for his ungrateful family. Interestingly, Samsa is a composite character in this production. The sagely British Bernard Mayes plays “The Voice”, a blend of conscience, omniscient narrator, and interlocutor who accompanies Samsa throughout the play. In addition to providing description “the Voice” converses directly with Samsa, who takes it for granted. Purists might scoff, but “the Voice” proves to be an elegant solution to traditional narration. In fact, Bauersfeld and Mayes’ interactions are easily the highlight of the drama. The conversing personae effectively take us inside Samsa’s mind as he muddles through his new situation.

The third element in bringing Gregor Samsa to audio life is the remarkable effect used to process Bauersfeld’s voice, giving it a bizarre, chittering echo. Creating effective and truly unique “creature voices” is a surprisingly subtle art. For novices, lowering / raising pitches or adding a metallic reverb is enough to make something sound monstrous, but these tired devices generally produce homogeneous results. Managing to find that sweet spot between keeping an actor’s voice understandable and giving it a truly unique, alien quality is a difficult feat. The Metamorphosis manages it handily: Bauersfeld’s insectile Samsa sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before, at once repulsive and sympathetic.

Bauersfeld’s performance is the best thing going for this production. Unfortunately, things go rapidly downhill once the rest of the cast appears. Kafka’s tragicomic, surreal story presents a significant challenge for dramatic interpretation. Should it be played straight? As a horror piece? As a black comedy? The Mind’s Eye players opted to treat it as a melodrama. This works to a degree for Robert Elross, who manages to wring some rough comedy out of Samsa’s overbearing father. Kenna Hunt, Beth Sweeney, and Priscilla Alden fare less well. Hunt overacts every line as Gregor’s stressed out mother, and sister Grete’s (Sweeney) histrionic fits are forced and exaggerated. Alden oddly chose to give the maid a comically heavy German accent, even though the entire story presumably takes place in Germany and the rest of the cast speaks standard English. Alden’s character plays to the stereotype of Germans being obsessed with order and cleanliness (believe me, it’s no stereotype), and it’s awkward and heavy-handed. Frankly, the poor quality of the acting had me convinced I was listening to community theater sunday players. I was wrong, but that doesn’t change the fact that the professional supporting cast turns in a sloppy, amateurish performance.

Bauersfeld and Mayes bring across some of the pathos and dark humor of Kafka’s melancholy tale, but as soon as the drama steps beyond the salesman’s lonely room into the lives of his dysfunctional family, the dysfunctional cast turns it into farce. A flawed curiosity, The Metamorphosis might be worth a listen for Bauersfeld’s stand-out portrayal of Samsa if you can find an old copy in your library or get it cheap.

Next: Fred Morsell brings a classic speech to life in his rendition of Frederick Douglass’ “The Meaning of the 4th of July for the Negro.” (English) Tune in for the Malleus review of a true American classic written by one of the country’s greatest orators.

Well, just because you exist in a place where human law is not even understood, does NOT mean that human activity doesn’t take place… as evidenced by the wild turns taken in the conclusion of this postmodern play.

Enjoy!

Download audio file (rdr-podcast072.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival! Episode 72

Welcome to the Weeks of Wireless! For a good month or so now, we’re going to be featuring the work of the Wireless Theatre Company whose work ranges from the comedic to the dramatic, poetic and a great deal of stories in between… This week, we kick off with “Bastion West on the Information Superhighway,” a story about humans caught in a non-human environment, and the behavior that comes from existing in a place with no moral compass, and no source of escape…

Download audio file (rdr-podcast071.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival – Episode 71

In another “Rabbit from the hat” episode, I pull out an amazingly clever and poignant tale from Roger Gregg’s Audio Gothic series — Brad’s Book of Lies. What IS it about advertising that makes THE BOOK so good?

Find out today…

Download audio file (rdr-podcast070.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival – Episode 70

This week we beg for money, visit an eerie future and sit down for a chat with Sam Mowry of the Willamette Radio Workshop.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast064.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival! Episode 64

This week we take classic fairy tales and turn them on their heads with a compelling piece produced as part of the Willamette Radio Workshop‘s Writer’s on the Air radio writing workshop help every summer. “Next Year’s Girl” tells about a small village held under the thumb of a beast which requires a yearly sacrifice of their young girls. But as one daring young girl finds out, there is beauty in the beast, and more beasts than one easily sees…

Download audio file (rdr-podcast063.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival – Episode 63

Well, tis’ time to let slip the dogs of war again in an event that’s WAY more intoxicating than St. Patrick’s Day… it’s the Ides of March! To celebrate, we have a bonus presentation of the uncut Tragedy of Julius Caesar by Quicksilver Radio Theatre. Hope you enjoy!

Download audio file (rdr-bonus-julius-caesar.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival – Bonus Presentation of Julius Caesar

Well partner, it’s a sad story of that Seany Boy, but when Audio Gothic arrived in the mail a few weeks back thanks to the generosity of Roger Gregg, I couldn’t help but put my ears on it and reschedule everything to get it out on the show.

This tale, referred to cleverly in “The Salmon of Blackpool,” tells about an old Irish farmer who takes his dreams of being a cowboy a little too far.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast061.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival! Episode 61

And in other news, Henry Howard passed along this link to an interview with Roger on RTE1 — he gets to talk about the legacy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the latest dramatic reading of the show in memory of Douglas Adams.

Things aren’t looking good for Johnny Gallagher in the last episode of The Salmon of Blackpool, but the story of Richie’s little fish isn’t over yet. Sinead makes a break, Sheldon comes from the states, and the bond between Richie and Johnny is tested in the powerfully moving final episode of Crazy Dog Audio Theatre’s magnificent tale.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast055.mp3)
Radio Drama Revival! Episode 55

Crazy Dog Audio Theatre‘s The Salmon of Blackpool Credits:

Written, Directed and Produced by Roger Gregg.

CAST:

David Murray: Johnny Gallagher.
Sarah Greene: Sinead Murphy.
Michael Sheehan: Richie Ryan
Morgan Jones: Doctor Whitman
Georgina Miller: Nurse Marcella.
Liam Heffernan: Donal MacSweeney
Roger Gregg: Sheldon Berkus.
Other parts played by the above members of the cast.

Mark McGrath: Sound Engineer, location recording.
David Grimes: production assistant.

Music composed and performed by Roger Gregg.

Vocals by Sarah Greene.

Recorded and post-produced the Summer of 2007

In the third episode to Crazy Dog Audio Theater’s gripping “The Salmon of Blackpool,” Johnny Gallagher continues to deteriorate as Richie gets fire rained down from him by Sheldon. All the while, Richie struggles to understand who Johnny is deep inside, and the people and place that made him the inferno of a man he is.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast054.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival! Episode 54

Crazy Dog Audio Theatre‘s The Salmon of Blackpool Credits:

Written, Directed and Produced by Roger Gregg.

CAST:

David Murray: Johnny Gallagher.
Sarah Greene: Sinead Murphy.
Michael Sheehan: Richie Ryan
Morgan Jones: Doctor Whitman
Georgina Miller: Nurse Marcella.
Liam Heffernan: Donal MacSweeney
Roger Gregg: Sheldon Berkus.
Other parts played by the above members of the cast.

Mark McGrath: Sound Engineer, location recording.
David Grimes: production assistant.

Music composed and performed by Roger Gregg.

Vocals by Sarah Greene.

Recorded and post-produced the Summer of 2007

This week, we sink deeper into the world of Johnny Gallagher, an Irish moviestar on the terrible road to death, and Richie Ryan, the man sent to document the “feel good” story behind this fallen icon. But as is made poignantly clear, it is hard to find the the “feel good” in this tortured man’s life.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast053.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival! Episode 53

Crazy Dog Audio Theatre‘s The Salmon of Blackpool Credits:

Written, Directed and Produced by Roger Gregg.

CAST:

David Murray: Johnny Gallagher.
Sarah Greene: Sinead Murphy.
Michael Sheehan: Richie Ryan
Morgan Jones: Doctor Whitman
Georgina Miller: Nurse Marcella.
Liam Heffernan: Donal MacSweeney
Roger Gregg: Sheldon Berkus.
Other parts played by the above members of the cast.

Mark McGrath: Sound Engineer, location recording.
David Grimes: production assistant.

Music composed and performed by Roger Gregg.

Vocals by Sarah Greene.

Recorded and post-produced the Summer of 2007

Oh radio drama fans, do we begin a treat for you today… I am absolutely tickled to bring to you, for the first time broadcast in the United States, the latest startling, bold, gripping, and mesmerizing tale by Crazy Dog Audio Theater… The Salmon of Blackpool

Now the phrase “audio movie” gets kicked around a lot in audio circles, but this work is by far the first to show just what an “audio movie” can be. Cut-throughs, fades, in-scene sound effects, stunning performances and the feeling of being in a real room with these people… “Salmon” does all this and more, propelled along by the cutting words of Roger Gregg, who shows us his skills as a literary writer are on par of that of his biting satire.

Today we begin to learn a little bit about the world we’ll be visiting for the next four weeks… A world where two Irish talents collide in their hometown, a place neither ever wanted to return to, in a situation riddled with irony and dotted with a desperate search for truth, all while voices from across the Atlantic cry out for the “feel good.”

Whether “Salmon” makes good box office is up for your ears to decide. But it’s a hell of a story.

Download audio file (rdr-podcast052.mp3)

Radio Drama Revival! Episode 52

Crazy Dog Audio Theatre‘s The Salmon of Blackpool Credits:

Written, Directed and Produced by Roger Gregg.

CAST:

David Murray: Johnny Gallagher.
Sarah Greene: Sinead Murphy.
Michael Sheehan: Richie Ryan
Morgan Jones: Doctor Whitman
Georgina Miller: Nurse Marcella.
Liam Heffernan: Donal MacSweeney
Roger Gregg: Sheldon Berkus.
Other parts played by the above members of the cast.

Mark McGrath: Sound Engineer, location recording.
David Grimes: production assistant.

Music composed and performed by Roger Gregg.

Vocals by Sarah Greene.

Recorded and post-produced the Summer of 2007