Blog – Page 11 – Atlanta Radio Theatre Company

Posted on May 14, 2015November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

The Passion of Frankenstein part 1 of 5

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The Passion of Frankenstein is legendary amongst longtime ARTC members. First performed at Dragon Con in 1998 it has been repeated only four times in our long 31 year history. It is powerful. A freight train of an audio drama, crafted by Thomas E. Fuller to assault the audience with raw power and emotion. And it is a technical nightmare.

Bill Ritch, Christina Fuller, and Matt Gwaltney - the tech crew — Pictured: a technical nightmare

The creation scenes involve layer after layer of switches, electrical sounds, dynamos, chains, rain, thunder, lightning, and the frantic shouting of Victor and his assistant Henry, along with the mournful recitation of the Monster’s borrowed poetry. Fuller made extensive use of Percy Shelley’s poetry in the script.

Daniel Taylor and David Benedict — “Poetry”

Over 80 individual sound cues go into this hour-long production, not to mention the live Foley sound effects. In 1998 this involved multiple CD players and tape decks, some of which were arranged to play certain sounds on a loop and could be faded in and out to prevent having to cue up those sounds again later. In 2015 we brought it to World Horror Convention, safe in the assumption that modern technology would make the production easier. While it is true that the laptop we ran the SFX from took up less space, it did not help as much as we’d hoped in terms of making the SFX easier to cue.

Tony Fuller and Bob Brown on Foley — Just some of the live Foley, performed by Tony Fuller and Bob Brown, mixed by Ashley Harp

When you have a piece this complex, you can’t just perform it once, so we will be repeating it in 2015 at LibertyCon and Dragon Con. For the next cycle of podcasts we will be bringing you each of the 5 parts from a different one of those productions, as well as the studio production.

We hope you enjoy it.

Posted on May 14, 2015November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

31 Years of ARTC: LibertyCon 2009

Continuing our look back at ARTC’s 31 years (thusfar!) with photos from our live performances. You can get a look at our whole history of combining adventures in sound with the thrill of live performance in our Chronology!

In this installment we bring you our appearance at LibertyCon where we presented Our Fair City by Robert A. Heinlein, Omnilingual by H. Beam Piper, and Rory Rammer, Space Marshal: Enemies Within! by Ron N. Butler. Check out all the pictures on our Flickr album.

We’re prepping for our next performance at LibertyCon right now, and the setup there is a LOT different than what is depicted in these pictures. Come on over to Chattanooga, check out a great convention, and be a part of one of our best audiences of the year!

Clair W. Kiernan and Ron N. Butler at the microphones.

Brad Weage playing two keyboards. — Brad Weage plays two keyboards and still turns his own pages!

Rachel Bowman runs recorded SFX. — Rachel Bowman on recorded SFX.

Clair W. Kiernan and Brian Phillips on the mics. Alton Leonard and Ron N. Butler wait their turn.

The Tech Crew - Bob Zimmerman, Bill Ritch, and Rachel Bowman. — The Tech Crew – Bob Zimmerman, Bill Ritch, and Rachel Bowman.

The Foley Team - Lili and Fiona K. Leonard. — The Foley Team – Lili and Fiona K. Leonard.

Posted on April 9, 2015November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea part 4 of 4

Size: 7.81M Duration 17:03

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You know who tends to get all the glory in theatrical productions? Actors. You know who really does all the work? Technicians.

Tony Fuller on Foley sound effects — Tony Fuller is upset about not getting more glory.

Especially in audio drama, all actors have to do is show up and read their lines. We even get our scripts on stage!

Bob Zimmerman, audiomancer. — Bob Zimmerman is unimpressed by your reading skills.

Sure, acting requires diction and timing and the ability to convince an audience that you are a person other than the one you really are, but without the music and without the sound effects the giant squid just ain’t gonna attack The Nautilus.

Alton Leonard on music. — Alton Leonard can’t hear the actors complaining because he’s busy making music.

Plus, they’re the only ones who know which wires to plug into which other wires. Also, amplifiers are heavy. And ARTC brings a lot of stuff with us to our performances because you never know what you’re gonna need.

Giuliana Ward on recorded SFX — Giuliana Ward is too happy to be mad at actors for hogging the spotlight.

So the next time you’re at an ARTC performance, be sure to thank the technicians! (Also the floor manager, not pictured). It’s their show, too!

Bob Zimmerman and Alton Leonard with David Benedict — Making the magic happen. The magic of RADIO!

Posted on April 2, 2015November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

31 Years of ARTC: An Atlanta Christmas 2009

In this installment we bring you our appearance at the Academy Theatre in Avondale Estates, which featured our 2009 performance of Blues for Johnny Raven by Thomas E. Fuller. Check out all the pictures on our Flickr album.

Ok, so it’s April and some people probably aren’t over last Christmas yet, but hey, it’s almost Easter so let’s get back into the holiday spirit with pictures from An Atlanta Christmas 2009!

Lili Bilbao and Tennille Clayton on Foley — Write your own caption. We dare you.

The cast of An Atlanta Christmas — A decent portion of the cast. The indecent portion is still backstage.

Brian Troxell, Daniel Kiernan, and Brian Phillips — The original beanie babies. And a giant snore.

Brian Troxell and Brian Phillips — It’s INTENSE! OOOH, YEAH!

Hal Wiedeman, Brian Troxell, and Daniel Kiernan — Hooray! …or whatever they were saying at the time.

Posted on March 12, 2015November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea part 3 of 4

Size: 10M Duration 17:46

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Sometimes in the podcast we give credit to the lighting designer. This may seem strange to listeners who have never seen us perform live because it’s not like we’re showing a video of the performance. Why would we give a credit to the lighting designer when you can’t see their work?

Daniel Taylor, Clair W. Kiernan, and Daniel W. Kiernan — Here’s some of their work. Happy now?

Because at a live performance, the lighting can enhance even an audio experience in ways that are difficult to describe. In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea the characters are often underwater, outside of the Nautilus. During those times they can’t easily speak to each other, which makes dialogue challenging.

When we adapt H. P. Lovecraft, there often isn’t any dialogue at all, and so we just make some up. But in this case the passages where the characters are underwater are filled with lush descriptions of undersea life and landscapes that many of us will never see. We couldn’t just leave them out completely, nor could we make up dialogue that the other characters could never hear.

So we decided to create a music bed and have the characters each share their own perspective on what they were seeing through a triptych of interwoven monologues. In those instances the lighting helped the live audience adjust better to the transition.

That lighting design is nearly always done by our host at the Academy Theatre, Robert Drake. So the next time you come out to see ARTC perform live anywhere where we have control over the lights (we usually don’t at our convention performances), ask if Robert’s around! And thank him for all his work!

ARTC’s next live show is at the Academy Theatre in Hapeville on March 28-29, 2015!

Posted on March 5, 2015November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

31 Years of ARTC: Blues for Johnny Raven 2009

This was our 25th Anniversary performance, and so we really went all out, as they say.

Bill Kronick and Alton Leonard going “all out”.

Y’know, we talk about how surprising it is that we’ve lasted so long. But the truth is that good storytelling is and has always been valued, so it really shouldn’t be that surprising.

Mary Buchanan and Megan Tindale backstage. — Ok, maybe it’s a little surprising.

This performance featured some of our favorites, some blasts from the past, and was a ton of fun. We got to see our founder William Brown take the stage again to recite The Mountain Whippoorwill by Stephen Vincent Benet…

William Brown on stage. — You don’t often see someone playing the “air violin”.

…as well as one of our favorite Rory Rammer episodes: The Asteroid of Love.

Fiona Leonard, Megan Tindale, and Ariel Kasten sing with Ethan Hurlburt observing. — Featuring the beautiful Android Sisters!

We were also treated to Brad Strickland’s An Arkham Home Companion.

We were also joined by our frequent musical guest Juliana Finch!

And, lest we forget, the main attraction, Blues for Johnny Raven!

Fiona Leonard and Daniel Kiernan — Raven (Daniel Kiernan) listens to the case brought to him by Gloria Kinsolving (Fiona Leonard).

Brad Strickland and Daniel Kiernan — Raven (Daniel Kiernan) consults with his friend and informant, Benny the Gospel (Brad Strickland)

Mary Buchanan takes a break from playing the sax.

Ariel Kasten and Megan Tindale — We have no idea what’s going on in this picture.

Blues for Johnny Raven is in the final stages of post-production now and will be available soon, first by download and later on CD!

Posted on February 13, 2015November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

31 Years of ARTC: The Call of C’thulhu 2009

This week we bring you our appearance at the Academy Theatre in Avondale Estates, which featured our 2009 performance of The Call of C’thulhu by H. P. Lovecraft, adapted for audio by Ron N. Butler. Check out all the pictures on our Flickr album.

We’ve performed a lot of different places over the years. Hotel ballrooms. High school auditoriums. Hair salons. But one of our favorites from an acoustic point of view was the Avondale Estates location for the Academy Theatre.

Typical stage setup for ARTC — The stage is set…

Not too big, not too small, well lit, walls made of hard concrete. Well, maybe that last part wasn’t so great, but you can’t have everything.

A portion of the cast of *Night Call* by Brian Phillips

At our 2009 performance, not only did we bring everyone the cosmic horror that is Lovecraft’s The Call of C’thulhu, we also brought Brian Phillips’s original audio drama Night Call and Kelley S. Ceccato’s The Worst Good Woman in the World!

Portion of the cast of — There’s really only one harmonica player here. But in audio, who can tell?

Tammie Hood and Clair W. Kiernan. Hats? What hats?

We’ve talked before about how we don’t often do costumes, but every so often we just can’t help ourselves.

Tennille Clayton and Sonya at the Foley table. — High tech Foley. Squishiness comes at a price.

J. E. Hurlburt at the microphone for — Auditions for Lovecraft pieces sometimes consist of just a bunch of screaming.

Be sure to check out our performance calendar to see when you can see us next!

Posted on February 13, 2015November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

Podcast glitch

It’s come to our attention that the podcast for January and February had some kind of digital glitch that was causing a beep every few seconds. We want to apologize for that and let you all know that we’ve fixed it, but also want to assure everyone that we would never stoop to such tricks to “watermark” our content that way.

If you ever have any trouble with the podcast, or any other part of the website or our offerings, please let us know!

Unauthorized posting of our content is a problem, no question, and if you see anything posted that doesn’t look like it came from us on an official channel, we’d appreciate your letting us know (especially our studio work), but it would never be our intention to make for a bad listening experience.

There are exciting things in store for the podcast later this year. Right now we’re going to keep it nice and vague, but we think you’ll like what we have in mind. Thanks for listening!

Posted on February 12, 2015November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea part 2 of 4

Size: 10.5M Duration: 18:04

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When writing the script for Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, David Benedict and Brad Strickland had two major problems to overcome. The first was compressing a novel-length work of genius by Jules Verne into an hour time slot. That was solved through vicious editing.

The second problem? There are no women in Verne’s tale of the sea and ARTC has been blessed with a number of extremely talented actresses. It would have been a crime to leave them out entirely. So, artistic liberty was applied. First, it was decided that Conseil, Professor Arronax’s faithful companion, would be a woman. Second, a new female member of the crew would be introduced.

Clair Kiernan as Conseil and Kelley S. Ceccato as Navigator Aznar

Captain Nemo’s crew is not mentioned heavily by name in the original work. They are clearly vital to Nemo’s voyage under the sea, and he values them greatly. No, he reveres them. But precious few individuals are named. This gave Strickland and Benedict an opportunity to introduce audiences to one, who just happened to be a woman, and also to allow the audience an opportunity to track the progress of the Nautilus as Navigator Aznar announces the submarine’s position at the beginning of many scenes.

One thing that was very important, however, was that Aznar not be relegated to the “love interest” of the play. The only love interest that is present in the script, as well as the original novel, is Nemo’s love of the sea – of its beauty and what it can provide if it is respected.

Posted on January 29, 2015November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

31 Years of ARTC: The Man Who Traveled in Elephants 2008

We spent a good part of last year documenting our last 30 years through photographs of our live performances. But wouldn’t you know it, we ran out of year before we ran out of pictures! So we’re going to continue on! And don’t forget our Chronology for a look at our 30 (and counting!) years of live performance!

This week we bring you our appearance at Stage Door Players in 2008, which featured The Man Who Traveled in Elephants by Robert A. Heinlein. Check out all the pictures on our Flickr album.

We’re pressed for time this week, so we’re going to let the pictures speak for themselves this time! This was an amazing show, though, and we wanted to share it with all of you rather than let a week go by with no pictures.

The Man Who Traveled in Elephants is out of print at the moment, but we hope to bring it back later this year, with any luck!

Alton Leonard warms up before the dress rehearsal.

The Foley team, Hal Wiedeman and Deanna Ameri, hard at work!

The cast during dress rehearsal — Dress rehearsals are a bit more informal with us!

Our musical guest for this show, Juliana Finch!

Nancy Skidmore at the ARTC sales table. — Nancy Skidmore staffs the sales table. Can we sell you a CD?

The other Foley team, Daniel Taylor, Deanna Ameri, and Jeff Baskin, along with actor Daniel Kiernan.

See you all again next week with more pictures!

There Is Adventure In Sound