Den of Geek brings us a Blogtor Who story of Ingrid Oliver joining the ranks with Jemma Redgrave to reprise her role and continue UNIT: Extinction, a Big Finish audio series focused on the Unified Intelligence Taskforce. The Unit was developed during the Moffat years of Doctor Who and we’re all excited to hear what this story will entail!
Matt Oliver in the Oxford Mail points out a new trend in audio drama goodness- walking tours of historic sites. Or in this case, paddling tours of the Oxford Canals. Tom Dick and Debbie Studio, local based producers, have taken the winners of some historical plays about the Oxford Canal, developed, edited, and uploaded the four, 10-minute pieces to the Oxford Canal Heritage Project’s website. All were performed in the St. Barnabus Church, Canal Street structure and do an excellent job chronicling the history of the historic waterways.
In our interactive society, how many more great audio are we going to find out about?
What do you do when your plans to perform Shrek the Musical fall apart?
Why you go back to the drawing board- or the listening board as is the case of Redwood Area Theatre.
In this article from Redwood Falls Gazette by Joshua Dixon we discover:
Lorna Lueck-Plaetz, current RAT president, said, “We all figured, ‘Well, we won’t be doing a show this summer.’ Then board member Kurtis Parlin pointed out the Marshall theatre group has done some radio shows during the winter months.”
Two out of the three shows were taken from Old Time Radio:
• The Man Who Thought of Everything, about a couple planning to elope, with every possible contingency taken into account.
• The Wills, which originally starred Lucille Ball, is the story of a woman whose husband urges her to go to a lawyer to get a will, then goes to the store to buy rope, poison, etc. etc.
• A Retrieval Reformation, based on a short story by O. Henry, tells the story of a safe-cracker who’s wanted by the law — and the surprising way he is exposed.
Auditions were held June 11th, and now its all about getting the actors in costume and bringing he forties back to live on stage and in imagination. Go Redwood!
Don’t Close Your Eyes has begun its fifth summer of live radio plays at Bozeman’s Verge Theater. Their incredible two month session started in June and ends on the last week of July with every single week a new hour long live audio drama performance. So if you’re in Bozeman, Montana some time check them out!
We’re in a very flexible time for audio drama, maybe the best time to be making it since its creation.
Case in point, New Hampshire Public Radio had the idea to Outsource A Radio Drama. After selecting Sean Hurley from NPR to manage the project, he went to Fiverr, the microjob website and selected everything from a psychic to pick the show title, to writers, actors and the like to produce.
The result was an interesting piece. Have a listen for yourself!
Aden Rolfe, whose series A Thoroughly Wet Mess is getting a kind of kickstart of its own through the powerhouse Serial, thinks its about time for people to get back to some audio creativity. According to the article from The Sydney Morning Herald, The digital age has taken radio to both the cutting edge of modern broadcasting and back in time – delivering the freedom of independently produced, listen-when-you-like podcasting that at the same time is a throwback to the medium’s golden age – pre-television, when radio serials were the dominant form of household entertainment.
“I think the main thing that comes off the back of things like Serial and some of the other podcasts … is that it creates a real audio literacy,” Rolfe says.
Rolfe says that about ten years ago audiences were a little scared listening to creative radio, but thanks to Serial it’s opened the field wide open.
Feeling a little smug are you? Just because Audio Drama listeners aren’t above the trend, doesn’t mean we’re not above a little backslapping each other for either. Congratulations!
Sonic Society alumni, Jay Sykes who brought us the awesome Seaburn, has just won the gold for Best Student Radio Drama at the New York Festival’s International Radio Program Awards for The World’s Best Radio Programs. Wow! Congratulations Jay, from all of us here at the Sonic Society, you entranced us with your entry, it’s only fair that you seduce the rest of the world with your work. All the best to the future, and send us more shows!
It’s been a slow ride through the RSS feeds and the gentle eddies of subscription space, but as we wind down our tenth season of the Sonic Society and a pretty busy one with three shows a week (Sonic Echo, Sonic Speaks and of course the Sonic Society) it’s important to see how far we’ve gone and where we’re actually going to be.
Witness in case of point, the article in the New York Times by Farhad Manjoo entitled Podcasting Blossoms, but in Slow Motion. Podcasting is very much like gardening. You have to constantly tend to your feed, weed out the flubs in your recordings, and let the listenership bloom. Manjoo says that after ten years the growth is still slow, but it is continually growing. We’ll get there, together.
More fantastic zombie news! The dead walk again! Or at least, the unliving monsters from KC Wayland’s zombie epic We’re Alive. Wayland’s back, and in this article with Army Times describes what he’s already revealed to Sonic Speak listeners last month that his new parallel tale from the post apocalyptic nightmare- Lockdown will be coming to a podcatcher near you!
Support KC Wayland and the We’re Alive Podcast at its Kickstarter campaign where YOUR donation may be just what is needed to finish this fantastic new voyage into terror.
From the amazing studio that brought you Powder River, The Martian Chronicles, Captain Blood and other thrilling tales- now adapted from the pure zombie nightmare comic- Dead Ahead! Written by Mel Smith and adapted for radio by Jack J. Ward, this terror-filled blood bath will keep you away from the water, and safely aboard while the moans from the unliving remain.. Dead Ahead. Listen to this trailer and look for the summer release from Colonial Radio Theatre in August!
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