Tag: stone mountain

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30 Years of ARTC: Halloween 2005

This being our 30th anniversary, we thought we’d dip back into the past and recap some of our previous performances, triumphs and tragedies, in a series of posts. And don’t forget our Chronology! It’s not as detailed, but it really shows the growth of ARTC over the years.

This week we bring you our appearance at Barnes and Noble Perimeter for Talk Like a Pirate Day in 2005. Check out all the pictures on our Flickr album.

It’s October! Our favorite month of the year! A time of witches, ghosts, goblins, and things that go bump in the night. We’re especially fond of things that go bump in the night. It’s that magical time when people really let their imaginations run away with them, and we love that!

ARTC takes the stage!
Imagine there’s a set here.

We get some of our best non-convention audiences around Halloween. Specializing in horror and science fiction, as we do, it’s no wonder that people are looking for something a little extra. Something that goes beyond the usual slasher serial killers the movies so often give us.

ARTC at Stone Mountain Park
We don’t do serial killers. We do killer serials!

At our 2005 performance we got a chance to show off some of our less elaborate, but still really spooky, Halloween material. We brought out Armada Rising about the Spanish Armada risen from the depths, an episode of Dr. Geoffry Stanhope about the Loch Ness Monster, and a bunch of other treats for our audience that year!

ARTC tech and musicians make for an amazing show!
The horror of the tech crew. The horror.

And this year we’re getting the chance to bring some of that unproduced material into ARTC Studio! So you’ll get a chance to hear it yourself very soon!

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30 Years of ARTC: Halloween 2004

This being our 30th anniversary, we thought we’d dip back into the past and recap some of our previous performances, triumphs and tragedies, in a series of posts. And don’t forget our Chronology! It’s not as detailed, but it really shows the growth of ARTC over the years.

This week we bring you our appearances at Onstage Atlanta and Stone Mountain Park for Halloween 2004. Check out all the pictures on our Flickr album.

A plastic pumpkin graces the ARTC stage at Stone Mountain Park
ARTC’s Halloween stage decorations

We love Halloween. Love it. It’s seriously our favorite time of year. The cool fall weather, the colorful leaves on the skeletal trees…and the eerie atmosphere it brings with it. October seems to be a natural month for audio drama, and with our emphasis on horror and science fiction we are right at home.

Brad Weage, David Carter, Cyd Hoskinson, and Tracy Wilson make up the tech crew for this show.
Brad Weage, David Carter, Cyd Hoskinson, and Tracy Wilson make up the tech crew for this show.

As is often the case in the arts, the performers tend to garner most of the accolades. They’re the ones up front, visible, and vocal. But in our case the tech and Foley crew are the real stars. It’s been said that if the show is going well, you don’t even notice the tech crew is there, and that’s pretty much the case. We’ve been very lucky to have a lot of great people on tech over the years and we’re always looking for more!

Megan Tindale holds up the 'Yay!' sign for Rory Rammer, Space Marshal.
Megan Tindale is thrilled that we remembered this sign for this show.

The fact is that most people don’t always know about all the opportunities available in ARTC. Sure we love voice actors and we always need more techs, Foley artists, and musicians. We can even teach you how to do some of those things if you’re interested in learning and have a little patience. But did you know we also have all the same needs and roles of any non-profit? Marketing, fundraising, public relations, graphic design…you name it, we’ve got an opportunity for you.

Jack Mayfield and Clair W. Kiernan perform as Daniel Taylor provides Foley sound effects.
Jack Mayfield and Clair W. Kiernan perform as Daniel Taylor provides Foley sound effects.

But back to the show. This year we took the unusual step of having Halloween shows in two venues. Onstage Atlanta graciously hosted us, as well as Memorial Hall in Stone Mountain Park. It involved a lot of shuffling of equipment back and forth, but our audiences had a great time.

Jack Mayfield, Megan Tindale, Geoffrey Brown, and David Benedict address the microphones
Jack Mayfield, Megan Tindale, Geoffrey Brown, and David Benedict address the microphones

We also changed up the show we were doing, depending on where we were at the time. A bit more adult fare at Onstage Atlanta, a bit more family-friendly at Stone Mountain Park. That’s the flexibility of ARTC. You can check out the playbill for these shows here!

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30 Years of ARTC: Frontier Days and Tomato Festival

This being our 30th anniversary, we thought we’d dip back into the past and recap some of our previous performances, triumphs and tragedies, in a series of posts. And don’t forget our Chronology! It’s not as detailed, but it really shows the growth of ARTC over the years.

This week we’re bringing you two events at once! The Tomato Festival and Frontier Days, both at Stone Mountain Park.

ARTC in a rare outdoor performance.
Outdoor venues. Not for the faint of heart.

The first thing you’ll notice about this performance at the Tomato Festival is that it’s outdoors. We’re not terribly fond of outdoor venues for a variety of reasons, but this show was a ton of fun.

Megan Tindale performs at the Tomato Festival
Megan Tindale

One reason why we don’t care for the outdoors much is that the weather is going to either be good or bad. If it’s good, then people aren’t likely to stick around to hear a radio performance no matter how good it sounds. If it’s bad then everybody probably stayed home or ran indoors. Also, it can get hot out there!

Foley at the Tomato Festival
Foley at the Tomato Festival

Another reason is acoustics and unwanted sounds. At an indoor venue such as the Academy Theatre or even Dragon Con, we have a certain amount of control over how things sound. Outdoors, anything can happen. And we have to crank the volume up a little louder than normal because there are no walls for the sound to bounce off of!

Umbrellas go up as it begins to rain at Frontier Days
Umbrellas go up as it begins to rain at Frontier Days

But the number one reason we don’t like outdoor venues is because of our experience at Frontier Days and our cautionary tale of how great ideas can go wrong. Frontier Days was a celebration of the time between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War here in Georgia. We’d actually had to write a bunch of new scripts just to make sure we had some content for this show, and we were eager to debut them. And then it rained.

When the rain let up, the festival continued. They had strolling characters and reenacters and all kinds of fun stuff, including one gentleman who was demonstrating an actual black powder musket. We thought this was brilliant and, since one of our brand new scripts, The Legend of Nancy Morgan Hart, called for a gunshot, we thought this was an excellent opportunity to incorporate some live Foley into the show. We rehearsed it and everything went off without a hitch.

Then we performed it. At the critical moment, when our heroine is supposed to shoot one of the soldiers who has invaded her house, the musket misfired. All we got was a click. And the very next line was supposed to be “She shot him!” There was a pause on stage. The actors all looked at one another, and then at the Foley table who shrugged their shoulders helplessly. And then Geoffry Brown uttered the line that will live forever in ARTC history: “She poisoned me!” and David Benedict could only reply: “She poisoned him! Right there!”.

And the worst part is that, due to a technical glitch, we don’t even have a recording!!

Elayna Little Cook and Oreta Sarah Taylor on top of Stone Mountain
Elayna Little Cook and Oreta Sarah Taylor on top of Stone Mountain

But there are worse ways to spend your day than at Stone Mountain Park, even on an overcast and slightly rainy day. And we don’t remember if the walkie-talkies reached all the way back to the performance site.

Oreta Sarah Taylor, Megan Tindale, and David Benedict look out over the grand vistas surrounding Stone Mountain.
Oreta Sarah Taylor, Megan Tindale, and David Benedict look out over the grand vistas surrounding Stone Mountain.

We really did have a fun time doing these shows. 🙂