With MAD-CON 2021 in our rearview mirror, we now have the entire 18 sessions from Friday, July 23rd to Sunday, July 25th up on the Mutual Audio Youtube Playlist.
The time was well-spent with friends new and old. All looking forward to MADCON 2022 when we get to do this AND MORE face-to-face. Get your tickets today at www.mad-con.com
Dear Friend of Audio Drama/Audio Fiction:
It’s A GO! And it’s FREE! That’s right. Free. The Modern Audio Drama Convention 2021 is virtual and doesn’t cost a dime. Don’t believe me? Check out the half dozen daily Zoom calls here: https://www.mad-con.com/schedule
You will note the following:
Friday, July 23rd– is all focused on ideas and writing
Saturday, July 24th– is all about acting, recording and building a team
Sunday, July 25th– is focused on post-production and releases!
It’s a Masters in Audio Drama in one weekend. And ALL FREE.
And there’s more…
EXCLUSIVE to MAD-CON this year is a special workshop entitled “Improv your Writing” from Neil Jones and Peter Reynolds.
This unique mini-workshop is offered FREE to MAD-CON participants both Friday and Saturday from 4:30-6:30 PM (Eastern). Just sign up here! https://improvyourwriting.com/register
Numbers limited to 12!
Thank you for all you’ve done through the years. Remember EVERY Zoom session is FREE and the last half hour of each panel event is dedicated to Questions and Answers. So come armed to ask our experts ANYTHING.
I’ll be there all through the weekend, and keep a seat warm for you.
All the best, Jack
PHOENIX, June 26, 2020 — The committee for the Audio Theatre Central Seneca Awards™ has announced the complete list of nominees in all 11 categories for the 3rd annual awards. Presented by Porchlight Family Media, the Audio Theatre Central Seneca Awards™ is an awards program to recognize excellence in the world of family-friendly audio drama. The awards nominees have been selected from all eligible productions released in the 2019 calendar year.
Categories include Best Script, Best Long Form Audio Drama, Best Short Form Audio Drama, as well as categories to recognize excellence in acting. The complete list of nominees is available at thesenecas.org.
The award winners will be announced next month, July 24, 2020, via a live-streamed audio broadcast on the awards website. The broadcast will also be recorded and archived on the site.
For more information about the Audio Theatre Central Seneca Awards™, you can visit thesenecas.org. Inquiries may be directed to info@thesenecas.org. You may also contact the awards committee chair, J.D. Sutter, at jd@porchlightfamilymedia.com or 623-252-5779.
The incredible partner of the Mutual Audio Network and creative heart and mind behind The Rise of King Asilias, JV Torres, got some grand ink from the MD Theatre Guide from Mark Dreisonstok on May 21st. Check out the review!
“The Rise of King Asilas” is a fascinating, thought-provoking, audio series currently in its third season. The brainchild of JV Torres, who writes and stars as King Asilas, the show received a Latin Podcast Award in the category of “Performing Arts” and is nominated again in the “Drama” category for 2020.
“…a unique, reflective series worthy of attention . . . ”
Mr. Torres got interested in creating his own full-cast audio series replete with extended music and sound design via an unusual source – linguistics.
“I studied linguistics at Notre Dame of Maryland University. Linguistics is how I got into podcasting in the first place.” Mr. Torres was comparing the dialogue and accents used in old-time radio detective shows and comparing these to features he heard in modern audio drama. He then decided to produce his own modern audio drama series, and the rest is history. Or, perhaps more appropriately to his “King Asilas” series, alternate history!
“The Rise of King Asilas” starts off from a recognizable vantage point – the current divide in American society between conservatives and progressives. According to the plot of this series, this division leads to extreme factionalism and a variety of localized independent movements. Enter the U.S. General Asilas Roman, who invites these leaders to a conference where he has them and many of their followers assassinated. The United States is then abolished, and “The New Kingdom of America” is begun, with Asilas as absolute monarch. The series proceeds as this everyman-dictator deals with personal relationships (his wife Queen Rebecca and a love interest), foreign policies (future negotiations with King George, whom we assume to be the son of the real-life Duke and Duchess of Cambridge), and “night terrors” (doubtless a human reaction to the draconian measures Asilas has enacted).
Set 40 or 50 years in the future, the series is a modern dystopia with suggestions of works in the genre such as “Brave New World,” Mr. Torres comments that a major reference point is the Book of Revelation, for he states that “nothing is more utopian or dystopian than the Bible.” Indeed, there are biblical markers throughout the series, such as an appearance to King Asilas by the Angel Gabriel, who presents Asilas with a sort of Rosetta Stone which the king orders to be translated.
Yet “The Rise of King Asilas” is not merely science fiction due to its dystopian features, but also because of such elements as conspiracies of monsters and meetings with extraterrestrials (alien “close encounters” is a motif especially in season 2). By season 3, King Asilas turns his focus to religion, as he becomes more devout, and the Catholic Church and the Pope become a serious focus of the series. “Because we have thought of God and have the idea of God,” King Asilas has already noted to his doubting protégé Abigail in the first season, “there is a God.” Rare indeed is the adventure audio series which postulates the ontological argument for the existence of God.
There is also a JV Torres novel which bears the same title as the podcast drama. The novel and the audio series complement each other, telling the same story but presenting some different scenes so that each format enriches the other. The “King Asilas” novel is by no means the only book penned by Mr. Torres, as he works in second-language acquisition and has published a textbook. He intrigued us with the comment that “a textbook I published for English learners connects with strategies I employ in the audio series.” Indeed, the book is referenced in the credits of each episode and funds the production of the series. In the series, Mr. Torres is joined by the vocal talents of both professional and first time actors. Standing out for special mention is Clarence Jackson, who is ardent and complex as President Jackson, the last elected American commander-in-chief whose fate it is to relinquish the United States to the reign of King Asilas. John Doby also turns in a highly effective, low-key performance portraying Quintin Capone, the ominously named confidant of Asilas who helps the King retain power with Capone-like methods.
For these podcasts, Mr. Torres has teamed up with the Mutual Audio Network. The moniker of this network takes us back to traditional radio broadcasting. Radio listeners may remember the now-defunct Mutual Radio Network, famous for “Mutual Radio Theatre” and the radio version of “The Larry King Show,” which featured Mr. King’s occasional skit contacting extra-terrestrial life on the fictional Planet Fringus. Listeners of audio drama, whether coming from the entry point of older radio theatre or modern podcast audio dramas, should certainly give this unique, reflective series their attention. As Mr. Torres comments, “ I believe we are on the cusp of a digital renaissance in the podcasting world — if we are not there already!”
Link to the series: kingasilas.buzzsprout.com
Link to Website: theriseofkingasilas.com
Listen to The Rise of King Asilas weekly on Mutual’s Monday Matinee now available at all your favourite listening nodes:
RSS Feed: http://feeds.megaphone.fm/MUTUAL2587748521
Apple Podcasts/Itunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/monday-matinee/id1459541042
Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/monday-matinee
Google Podcasts/Play: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cDovL2ZlZWRzLm1lZ2FwaG9uZS5mbS9NVVRVQUw1MzcwODUxMDM4
iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-monday-matinee-30795458/
The past year has been a series of blows to the audio drama community, and the loss of William Dufris feels very much like a gut punch. While I had never met him personally, his work with Fred Greenhalgh and on his own had made waves in the Modern Audio Drama community. In short order, anyone who is anyone in this world knows who Bill Dufris is to the medium. Mindseye Productions has a wonderful Memorium to the man and I highly recommend you take the time to read through, check out the video clips and remind yourself of what a true loss this is to all of us. Rest well, sir. You more than earned it. Sorrow and best wishes and prayers to your family and friends.
Our missing Amigo would be hitting my mailbox with joy at this latest turn of the audio drama world. Mark Dreisonstok from The Sentinel posted this lovely gem about Dark Shadows gaining new life in the audio drama world.
The gothic serial “Dark Shadows” has had various incarnations over the years. Starting as an original television soap opera of the 1960s and 1970s, it became a comic book series, a big-budget 1991 primetime series, and several movies. The most recent adaptation was a Tim Burton film, which is both an homage and a spoof of the original series.
For more than a decade now, the original series has also been continued with original cast members and new storylines in a series of audio productions by UK-based Big Finish Productions.
Fans of the series will, of course, remember Barnabas Collins. Turned into a vampire by the witch Angelique, Barnabas is undoubtedly the most charismatic “Dark Shadows” character, killing mortal after mortal as a vampire but showing great pathos and remorse as well as fierce loyalty to his family. Collins appears in the Big Finish audio dramas, though less prominently, perhaps because Jonathan Frid, the original actor from the TV show, passed away soon after the audio series began. Nonetheless, Frid performs with cast members in one of the Big Finish productions, “The Night Whispers.” Frid is later replaced by the aptly named actor Andrew Collins in “The Curse of Shurafa,” in which he helps counter an ancient Egyptian curse.
Being from Canada, most of us never watched Dark Shadows when it was on. But I can absolutely, 100% guarantee Bill. We’d love to listen to it with you now.
The 4077th Productions and All Better Audio have been stalwarts on the ramparts of the audio drama landscape for more than a decade. Last year we lost Viktor Aurelius, and this past February, his partner in the sublime, Jeff Niles. Jonathan Patrick Russell from Dreamrealm Enterprises provides this moving tribute to his friend and collaborator…
Jeff Niles, founder of The 4077th Productions, has died. That’s a shattering sentence to type, as well it should be. Jeff would probably like me to throw a gag in this bit, because he always liked me to throw more gags into things, but I can’t find one. My friend is gone, and the gags aren’t there for me now.
His voice lives on, in the many productions he was involved with, and in our hearts and memories. Jeff was well-loved – nobody had a bad word to say about him. He was kind and funny and engaging – and he was always, always doing things. Lots of things, often all at once. “Hey, Jeffster, how’s it going?” I’d ask, over some internet messenger service. “Pretty good,” he’d reply, “just got back from drum circle to grab a bite to eat before heading over to rehearsals for the Radio Players. Spent all morning recording lines for Robotz of the Company, MOSH, Dr Who, a fantasy epic series, a political thriller, a sitcom about clowns, and a 15th Century dark romance set on the high seas, involving penguins.” “Cool,” I’d say, wondering where he got the energy and the enthusiasm. Because he was always enthusiastic, always seeing the positive side of things, forever singing the praises of the people he worked with and the projects he was involved with. I sometimes wondered if he was just being polite about sub par scripts (and I’ve written enough of those), but I think he genuinely loved acting and producing, and just being involved. To him, the good bits in anything always outweighed the bad bits, meaning he would invariably be prone to judge a work favourably. His enthusiasm was infectious. He rescued lots of things from the dustbin of ideas, gave them a smile and a good talking to, and released them into the world.
Someone soon should try to compile a list of all the performances he gave. That would be an awesome thing to read through. Because he could play anything. He did play anything. His range was enormous. He’s been Doctor Who (and The Master), Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, Professor Moriarty, various robotz (including the wonderful Zim Tron), sundry demons, Shakespeare’s King John, Edgar Allan Poe, Ebenezer Scrooge, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robin Hood, Faust, hard-boiled noir detective Lance Hardwick, Count Dracula, Tomás de Torquemada, and many, many, many more. So many more! He’d often be cast in several parts in the same thing, because no role was too small for him. I swear he did a MOSH single-handedly once, playing every character in a variety of accents. When we last spoke in December, I’d asked him to play the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, and I was greatly looking forward to hearing him play the part. Damn you, Jeff, now I’m going to have to recast! (That gag was for you, old friend)
Aside from being so busy and enthusiastic, he was always surprising. One day he told me he was producing audio campaign adverts for politicians. Another time he told me he had a whole other life as a pirate – he even had photos to prove it. That was another thing about Jeff – he was always in photos with people. There he is with an arm around Peter Davison. Here, he’s smiling at Nichelle Nichols. And here he is sat playing drums aboard a spaceship. That moustache! Those glasses! That twinkle in the eye.
We talked about producing a final MOSH story in the spring, with Holmes and Watson in their dotage, solving a case in their retirement home. The villain was going to be Moriarty’s daughter, now a Nurse Ratched type character. He wanted to call it Holmes Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but I talked him out of it. I’m going to write it anyway, and set it at Holmes’s funeral. And, Jeff, yes that’ll be the title.
My friend has died, but I’m still writing gags for him.
Goodbye, my friend.
Well over a decade ago, we remember the conversation well: “What should we call radio drama now that it’s having a resurgence on the Internet?”
On the Sonic Society, you can hear us
ruminate in our show intros considering a number of terms- audio drama, audio theatre, audio plays, audio pulp, audio cinema, audio movies etc… It became clear that a single term was needed to best to describe the medium. Most people decided that “radio drama” didn’t cut it, because the medium wasn’t limited to radio anymore. So, almost by default, the consensus circled their wagons around: “Audio Drama”. And it has been that way ever since.
At least, it was. Recently, with the public discovering podcasts (Isn’t it amazing?!), audio stories have become hot commodities. About five years ago, on the Sonic Society, we recommended the name “Podficts” for podcast fiction. A lot of people rejected that moniker, but the term “podcast fiction” stuck as news agencies, anxious to come up with a global term for story in sound, tossed out as many things that didn’t say “old-fashioned radio drama” as possible. Naturally, folks jumped on the bandwagon. New producers rebranded their theatre-of-the-mind as “audio fiction”. But, there may be good reason not to jump ships midstream.
Now if you’re not running an audio drama podcast this wouldn’t apply. Maybe you’re reading short fiction stories, or non-fiction stories, or articles. In those cases, “audio fiction” is probably your best label. But, if you’re producing in the medium of multi-cast audio theatre here’s a couple of reasons to keep the name “Audio Drama”:
Every time someone asks what is our favourite “audio fiction” podcast, we need clarification. Because our first thought is, “Do they mean Audio Drama? No, they must mean an audiobook podcast, right?”
In the Sonic Society, we love all audio tales. There’s no hierarchy of quality when it comes to terms. But, choosing the wrong term certainly creates confusion. “Audio Drama” is here to stay. Why not revel in it?
After all, “New Coke” successfully replaced “Coke Classic” right? Oh, wait a minute…
Since joining the Mutual Audio Drama two months ago, we’ve seen this network grow by leaps and bounds. If you have a favourite way to listen to Mutual, you can find it here. Some folks want to subscribe to one or more mini-casts for each day, and others prefer to have the entire Broadcast Feed. Whichever way you want your Audio Drama, you will love how you will always have content to listen to!
Here’s the links to the Mutual Audio Network and Master “Broadcast Feed”
MUTUAL AUDIO NETWORK
MUTUAL MASTER “BROADCAST” FEED
RSS Feed
Apple Podcasts/Itunes Google Podcasts/Play
Stitcher Spotify
iHeart Radio
And here’s what we had each day, found weekly in the mini-feeds below…
MUTUAL MINI-FEEDS
Monday Matinee- Classics, Live Shows, Drama, and OTR Audio Drama
RSS Feed Apple Podcasts/Itunes
Stitcher Google Podcasts/Play
iHeart Radio
Tuesday Terror- Horror Audio Drama & Audio Fiction
RSS Feed Apple Podcasts/Itunes
Stitcher Google Podcasts/Play
iHeart Radio Spotify
Wednesday Wonders- Science Fiction & Fantasy Audio Drama
RSS Feed Apple Podcasts/Itunes
Stitcher Google Podcasts/Play
iHeart Radio Spotify
Thursday Thrillers- Action Adventure, Mystery Audio Drama & Noir Fiction
RSS Feed Apple Podcasts/Itunes
Stitcher Google Podcasts/Play
iHeart Radio Spotify
Friday Follies- Comedy Audio Drama & Audio Fiction
RSS Feed Apple Podcasts/Itunes
Stitcher Google Podcasts/Play
iHeart Radio Spotify
Saturday Story Circle- Kids & Family Friendly Audio Drama
RSS Feed Apple Podcasts/Itunes
Stitcher Google Podcasts/Play
iHeart Radio Spotify
Sunday Showcase- Brand New Premiere Audio Drama from the Mutual Audio Network United Artists
RSS Feed Apple Podcasts/Itunes
Stitcher Google Podcasts/Play
iHeart Radio Spotify
The IndyCast folks have released a fan audio drama of the incredible Indiana Jones. MovieWeb.com gives some great details:
Produced by an international collective of artists across seven cities and over five years in the making, the first-ever feature-length Indiana Jones radio adventure will air on The IndyCast starting April 5th 2019. Released as a special episode, this fan-made full-cast audio drama is the marquee event in a diverse multimedia release including a screenplay, soundtrack, illustrations and more.
What started as a simple idea for a movie premise transformed into a global collaboration committed to giving Indiana Jones fans a brand new adventure in their favorite series:
In the immediate aftermath of the second World War, Indiana Jones returns home from his time with the OSS, now weary of his daredevil past. But just when he contemplates hanging up his hat for good, an old nemesis re-emerges with a plot to not only destroy the world’s newly established peace, but also erase the last thirty years of history. In order to stop him, Indy must journey into the heart of the legendary Devil’s Triangle where he will decide to either wipe out the sins of the world, along with his own mistakes, or renew his journey and remember the adventure!
There’s always more opportunities when you enter the Audio world. How cool would it be if the movie studios released audio dramas between the waits between movies?!
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