horror – Page 2 – Atlanta Radio Theatre Company

Posted on March 11, 2016November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

The Rats in the Walls-LIVE part 2 of 4

We’re really sorry we missed our normal publication time this month! Car trouble impeded our progress. But we’re back on track now!

EDIT: We forgot the link to the actual audio! It’s here now! Those of you looking for it can find it now!
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Tony Fuller at the Foley table — Tony Fuller practices breaking some kneecaps in case this ever happens again.

This month we continue with The Rats in the Walls from our 2012 performance. With music by The Ghosts Project, it was a really creepy experience.

Robert Drake on stage lights — Robert Drake is really creeped out.

The creepiness was enhanced by the lighting wizardry of Robert Drake. We don’t always have the luxury of special lighting at our live shows. At most of our convention appearances we usually just have the ballroom lights of the room we’re performing in, so being able to do a show at the Academy Theatre is a real treat.

Probably should have saved the fisheye lens for *The Shadow Over Innsmouth*

And don’t forget, you can get this performance at a much higher audio quality from Bandcamp!

Posted on February 11, 2016November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

The Rats in the Walls – LIVE part 1 of 4

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So last month we brought you The Music of Erich Zann. This month we decided to keep the cosmic horror going. And why not? It’s our 10th year of podcasting and our H. P. Lovecraft fans have been very good to us, so we’d like to be very good to them!

This month we bring you The Rats in the Walls-LIVE by H. P. Lovecraft, adapted for audio by Brad Strickland, with music by The Ghosts Project, accompanied by Alton Leonard.

This performance was part of our 2012 celebration, Lovecraft’s Nightmares. And it’s available for sale! Up to now, performances on the podcast were exclusive to the podcast, but you can download this performance from Bandcamp. Or, if you’re a purist, you can get the original recording that featured Harlan Ellison!

For the uninitiated, Lovecraft’s Nightmares was our monthlong celebration of the master of cosmic horror. For four weekends in October, ARTC performed a different Lovecraft adaptation from our catalog. The first weekend, we led off with The Rats in the Walls, featuring Dave Schroeder in the role of Delapore.

And, as if a month of Lovecraft weren’t enough, we invited our good friends Paul Mercer and Davis Petterson, The Ghosts Project, to play along. You can hear them on several of our other performances as well, such as The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Call of C’thulhu, and At the Mountains of Madness, and their music also serves as the intro for our podcast!

Keep a lookout for more collaborations between ARTC and The Ghosts Project!

Posted on January 14, 2016November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

The Music of Erich Zann

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Can you believe the first ARTC podcast was back in 2006? We can’t, and we published it!

At the end of 2015, we featured three interviews with ARTC writers and performers. We’ll be having more of that in 2016, but for now let’s get back to the audio drama with The Music of Erich Zann by H. P. Lovecraft, adapated for audio by Jonathan Horton and David Benedict, featuring music by The Ghosts Project, Paul Mercer and Davis Petterson with Alton Leonard.

This was part of our Lovecraft’s Nightmares show back in 2012 at the Academy Theatre.

Davis Petterson, Alton Leonard, and Paul Mercer — Davis is a dark and shadowy presence.

Lovecraft’s Nightmares was a monthlong celebration of the master of cosmic horror. His writing focuses on the strange, the macabre, and the insane. Speaking of insane, we performed a different Lovecraft adaptation each week in October of 2012, and many of the cast and crew went insane and everyone called the producer insane. But it was a ton of fun and we got a lot of great performances out of that month!

David Benedict — Pictured: The Producer. Insane.

You can hear more of the performances from Lovecraft’s Nightmares, and even more of our ongoing collaboration with The Ghosts Project, by purchasing them from our catalog. But for now, here’s a glimpse into madness. We hope you enjoy it.

Posted on September 20, 2015November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

The Passion of Frankenstein part 5 of 5

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We apologize for the lateness of the podcast this month. Dragon Con ate our brain.

Well, this is it. The final chapter in this 5-part saga of The Passion of Frankenstein. It’s been quite a summer with an unprecedented three performances of this gothic masterpiece.

We hope you’ve enjoyed getting to hear this piece from the different casts. We looked for some of the older performances, but they appear to have been misplaced. If we find them, maybe we’ll run them later.

Ron N. Butler and David Benedict in — “No, please! No more Frankenstein!”

In the previous installments of this piece, the music was done by Brad Weage. In this final installment we were pleased to have live music from The Ghosts Project.

Davis Petterson, Gabriel Monticello, and Paul Mercer

We also presented the Thomas E. Fuller Lifetime Achievement Award to William Alan Ritch and David Benedict!

William Alan Ritch accepts the Thomas E. Fuller Lifetime Achievement Award

David Benedict accepts the Thomas E. Fuller Lifetime Achievement Award

See you next month with something less monstrous!

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

The Passion of Frankenstein part 4 of 5

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We’re back with another podcast, and this time we’re coming back to the studio production of The Passion of Frankenstein. Remember, you can get this production in all its glory, with CD quality sound instead of the heavy compression we put on the podcast tracks, right here!

Also, just like the last time we used the studio production, we have no photos from that show, so we’re bringing you more from the LibertyCon show.

Matt Goodson as Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Where did he get his PhD, anyway?

Foley for Frankenstein — The best Foley team in all of existence. In this case it’s real FrankenFoley!

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

The Passion of Frankenstein part 3 of 5

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Continuing our presentation of Thomas E. Fuller’s powerhouse, The Passion of Frankenstein, this month we bring you a performance from LibertyCon 2015.

As we’ve mentioned several times, the script is like an irresistable force, bearing down on the audience and hitting them with a heady blend of emotion, horror, and intense sound effects. The piece is vocally challenging for our actors. When we decided to bring the performance to World Horror Convention, we knew we couldn’t just perform it once but we also knew that the actors’ voices might never be the same if they had to perform it as many times in a row as we were planning.

So for LibertyCon 2015 we switched up the cast. We hope you enjoy this segment that features several performers brand new to ARTC!

The cast and crew of “The Passion of Frankenstein” for LibertyCon 2015

And this is what happens when the director loses control of the performers.

We’re also bringing you the preview of our upcoming new release, Blues for Johnny Raven! Be sure to check out the IndieGogo campaign to see how you can help us make the CD available to YOU!

Posted on June 18, 2015November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

31 Years of ARTC: The Island of Dr. Moreau 2010

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 the Academy Theatre in October 2010 where we performed The Island of Dr. Moreau, featuring music by The Ghosts Project, along with Inhuman Rights, Rory Rammer, Space Marshal: Set Loose the Dogs of Time, and Bumpers Crossroads: The Stray Dog. This performance was a benefit for the Atlanta Humane Society and also included special musical guest Julie Gribble! Check out all the pictures on our Flickr album.

Ok, first up, we know that using The Island of Dr. Moreau as a benefit for the Atlanta Humane Society sounds like a sick joke.

Fiona K. Leonard and Daniel Taylor. — Really sick.

But the truth was that we thought it was a perfect choice to highlight the plight of animals. While it’s true that nobody is trying to turn animals into humans surgically…

Hal Wiedeman, Rachel Wansker, Clair W. Kiernan, Daniel W. Kiernan — THAT WE KNOW OF…

…animals still face serious challenges every day due to neglect, maltreatment, habitat loss, and various other challenges. We wanted to help, and we felt that one of H. G. Wells’s more shocking stories might assist with that.

Ron N. Butler, Brian Troxell, Hal Wiedeman, J. E. Hurlburt — And goodness knows we can use all the help we can get.

This was also a musically packed performance. In addition to the usual brilliance of Alton Leonard, we were thrilled to be graced with The Ghosts Project!

Daniel Taylor, Clair W. Kiernan, Paul Mercer, Davis Petterson — There they are, lurking in the background. Try not to frighten them.

Not to mention our very special musical guest, Julie Gribble!

This performance also featured our Beast Men Chorus, led by Beastmistress Trudy Leonard.

The Beast Chorus — Try not to let THEM frighten YOU. (click this image for a larger version)

Not to mention one of the more violent Foley performances in ARTC’s history, involving a rubber mallet and a rather unfortunate butternut squash, used to simulate the cracking of the pantherwoman’s skull.

Sonya, Mary Ward, David Benedict — The dastardly deed

butternut squash...squashed — The evidence of the crime

Be sure to come see more crimes against produce as we mangle a grapefruit in our upcoming performances of The Passion of Frankenstein!

Posted on June 11, 2015November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

The Passion of Frankenstein part 2 of 5

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As we mentioned last month, we’re bringing you The Passion of Frankenstein in five parts and will be showcasing a different performance for at least the first four. We hope. We haven’t performed two of these yet and if the recording devices fail (it’s happened) then we might have to improvise. Part five will probably include the best performance of those scenes, but who knows? We might surprise ourselves.

Paige Steadman Ross and Kelley S. Ceccato — Surprise!

This month we’re bringing you a section of the studio recording that we did at Audio Craft Studio back in 2002. This is what we refer to as the “original cast”. The pictures in this entry are still from World Horror Convention 2015, though, because we don’t have any pictures from any of the other performances yet. Talk to us after LibertyCon and Dragon Con. So the picture below of Thomas E. Fuller and Henry Howard at Audio Craft will have to do.

Thomas Fuller and Henry Howard admire an issue of the Centauri Express audio magazine at Audio Craft Studio

The studio recording was, literally, a monster to produce. The rich soundscape we talked about in last month’s entry is difficult to produce live, but surely in the studio it’s easier, right? Wrong.

Christina Fuller and Matt Gwaltney — What do you mean it’s not easier??

First, in the studio the standards are higher. Live audiences are very forgiving (thank goodness!), but once it’s on a recording all the little flaws stick out, so there’s a lot of precision work that has to get done. And the music, which in a live performance has a little bit of ebb and flow and adjustment to it, had to get timed out to the second to make the scenes work the way they were supposed to.

And then there was the review process.

Anthony Fuller and Bob Brown — “Our opinion of that draft of the recording might be at the bottom of this bucket. Or maybe it’s under it.”

See, this was back in the early 2000s when the Internet was only barely a thing for the general public. Cloud storage didn’t exist. Websites were hosted on Angelfire and Geocities. And CD-R technology wasn’t even remotely as reliable as it is now. We couldn’t just create an mp3, put it on a server somewhere, and have beta listeners download it and give feedback. We had to try to gather everyone together at the same time and have a listening party. On one memorable occasion we had all the relevant parties in the room…and the CD wouldn’t play. And burning another one would have involved an hour of driving and probably 30 minutes to actually burn the disk. So we all went home.

Ah, those were the good old days…

Posted on June 11, 2015November 5, 2019 by David Benedict

31 Years of ARTC: Dragon Con 2010 part 2

In this installment we bring you our appearance at Dragon Con 2010 (Sunday night edition) where we presented Time and Time Again by H. Beam Piper, adapted by Ron N. Butler and At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft, adapted by Thomas E. Fuller, and featuring music by The Ghosts Project. Check out all the pictures on our Flickr album.

It’s a short update this week, folks, as I am flying out to Kansas City, MO, later today to attend the HEAR Now Festival. But this was a momentous show because it marked the beginning of our long-standing relationship with The Ghosts Project, who have since gone on to play with us on several other productions, including The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Dunwich Horror, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and The Rats in the Walls!

Fiona K. Leonard — It’s completely mind-blowing

The Ghosts Project, Paul Mercer and Davis Petterson

Brian Troxell — “Don’t forget, you can own this recording of this historic performance.”

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.

There Is Adventure In Sound

Tag: horror