Imagination creation with Atlanta Radio Theatre Company
The Atlanta Radio Theatre Company was a secret to me till a very lucky internet search. Thank you Google! They are not just audio recordings of books, they are theatrical recorded entertainment. The type of audio that keeps you enticed and not drowsy. The type of audio that aids your imagination in creating the characters, setting and action. The type of audio that unfortunately is struggling, like all forms of storytelling. Below David Benedict talks about ARTC, and why you should tune in.
Q. The Atlanta Radio Theatre Company has been bringing old school radio performance back since 1984. But even though the term radio is in the name, you do not have a regular broadcast. So how can interested fans listen to your work?
A. In ARTC’s early days, before the radio market changed, we actually did make it onto the radio on a number of occasions. Since then, with the changes we’ve seen in technology, radio stations have become increasingly risk-averse and don’t want to run anything unless it’s a surefire hit. Those same changes in technology, however, have been a boon to audio dramatists worldwide, not just ARTC. Our work can currently be heard through recordings in the studio by mail order on CD or by download through Audible.com and iTunes. We also publish a monthly podcast and are one of the few audio theatres in the country to perform live. In addition to that, we are dabbling in streaming audio at http://www.artc.org/stream and even more distribution channels are coming! If people want to keep up with what we’re doing, they can find us on Facebook, Twitter, at our home website at http://www.artc.org, and we also publish a monthly newsletter, which has a signup link on the website.
Q. With the resurgence of the audio book due to iPhone apps, long commutes, and popular local events that are based on live storytelling and readings, do you think that ARTC with gain a resurgence of interest or gain a new outlet for getting work out?
A. Absolutely. The big problem with audio drama in America is that people often refer to it in the past tense. “Old-Time Radio,” “Classic Radio,” and other terms that indicate a “bygone age” are often used to describe audio drama. But the truth is that it’s still an active, thriving art form. I think that even audio dramatists do themselves a disservice by having a mindset rooted in the past and that all of us would benefit from allowing ourselves to think of audio drama as a current concern on the level of stage performances and even motion pictures. Changing the mindset of the general public is a tall order, but once it starts to happen and people realize that this is legitimate art and not just quaint nostalgia, I think audio drama in general and ARTC in specific are poised for major growth in this country. The current and gaining popularity of speculative fiction with the general public will only help in this regard, as this is where audio drama really thrives.
Q. ARTC does a lot of work with horror pieces, while still maintaining a diverse catalogue of work. Have you ever recorded or considered recording a local talent showcase of sorts for all the authors and writers that house themselves in this city?
A. We have. In the last two years we’ve done benefit performances for the Office of Letters and Light, organizers of National Novel Writing Month, and even encouraged participants in Script Frenzy to do their scripts in an audio style. OLL has discontinued Script Frenzy as an official activity of theirs, but we still encourage writers to delve into audio to find new challenges and allow themselves new freedom to create a living work of art that won’t cost them big bucks to realize their vision. In a way, all ARTC performances are a local talent showcase, as we grow most of our writers from within. We encourage new members who have an interest in writing to submit work, even if they’ve never written anything before. It’s not always easy for them, though. We have a rigorous workshopping process that we go through and most writers submit 3 or more drafts of their script before we’ll consider it for live performance, and there’s often another revision or two after that before we’ll take it into the studio. The only reason why we don’t do more is time – ARTC is currently an all-volunteer organization, and there’s only so much any of us can do at the moment.
Q. You are touted as the “theatre of the mind”. Why do you think that it is so important to keep a medium like this alive? And do you think this helps the book industry that also requires the same imagination but is currently lacking fans?
A. Our late head writer, Thomas E. Fuller, once said “I write audio drama because I find it to be the most plastic and economical mass media available…with radio drama we make the audience, the listener into a collaborator and transform their imaginations into our sets and actors.”
This economy in telling a story allows audio drama to delve deeper into speculative fiction (science fiction, horror, fantasy), which stimulates the mind into new directions of thought and can lead to new ideas. The thrill of discovery in this way can be very exciting!
In terms of the book industry, I think audio drama and books go hand-in-hand. You aren’t likely to hear much of audio dramas or books that rely on flashy special effects – you have to tell a compelling STORY to make them come alive and interest the audience. This is one of the reasons why audio dramas are often adaptations from books, but not necessarily from other art forms. You’ll occasionally see a stage play adapted for audio and there’s the famous “Star Wars” audio adaptation from the movies, but in most cases an audio drama adaptation comes from a compelling story in written form that someone decided they’d like to see come to life in a way that provided for the immediacy of performance, while staying true to the original source material, without breaking the bank.
Q. With the lack of interest, and most likely funding, from the radio industry to expand to storytelling. Would ARTC ever consider leaving the “golden age of radio” and entering the platinum age of digital by doing a podcast series?
A. ARTC is proud to publish a monthly podcast already, which can be found at http://podcast.artc.org. It’s currently made up of recordings of our live performances – shows that were too good to let them languish in the archives, but not quite up to the standards we try to uphold in our recordings for sale. As a result, it’s a bit piecemeal – we haven’t yet put together an entire serial for the podcast, nor have we done programming created specifically for the podcast, but who knows what the future might hold there? Stay tuned!
