Reimagining the radio play as creative port in a COVID storm

The pandemic has shut theaters, but audiences are still experiencing performances, thanks to a fresh spin on an old form.

The radio play is back, in its own 2020 way.

Energized by podcast technology and boosted in a big way by Amazon's Audible, which has its own theater division, today's radio plays are personal, earbud experiences, freed from the need of a radio signal, ready whenever you are, wherever you are.

They are simultaneously inside-your-head intimate and global, accessible to a worldwide audience, not just those who might take in a show in-person, whenever that is permitted again.

And they're delivering big Broadway talent — including Audra McDonald, Susan Stroman and Laura Benanti — in works ranging from classic to compelling to campy.

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Some makers of these new works bristle at the term "radio play," which conjures dusty episodes of "The Shadow," with the family huddled around a radio the size of a dorm fridge for a tinny-sounding broadcast.

Today's creators prefer "audio drama" or "modern audio fiction" or "work developed for audio" for the crystal-clear programs that can find an audience continents away at the blink of an eye, no static at all.

Given the pandemic, these works are recorded, not on huge sound stages in front of a live, studio audience, but often in the homes of the actors, and then painstakingly layered together, with sound effects and underscoring woven into the dialogue.

Whichever term is used, and however they are recorded, these works are a much-needed lifeline for a theater industry cratered by COVID-19: They keep actors acting, directors directing, and people talking about theater, even if it requires them to create the look of the show in their minds.

Creative outlets

The 2020 Williamstown Theatre Festival canceled in-person performances last summer — only to be reimagined for Audible. It kicks off Dec. 3 with six-time Tony-winner McDonald as Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire" alongside Ariel Shafir as Stanley and Carla Gugino as his Stella.

The following week, five-time Tony-winner Stroman presents Anna Ziegler's "Photograph 51," a drama about pioneering DNA researcher Rosalind Franklin. More Williamstown titles follow on Dec. 17 and 29, with three more plays rounding out the festival in 2021.

Consider some of the other creative output achieved during the pandemic:

• In July, New York's Public Theater continued its traditional free summer Shakespeare, albeit far from Central Park, with an audio production of "Richard II" presented on that other New York institution, public radio station WNYC;
• Broadway actors are earning paychecks recording original, multi-episode radio dramas that hew much closer to their olde-tyme forebears, on the Broadway Podcast Network;
• A tiny theater company outside Atlantic City brought Edgar Allan Poe's work to a YouTube Live session just in time for Halloween;
• A college theater department staged the gold-standard radio play: "War of the Worlds," and found 2020 parallels in the 1938 work;
• Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, New York, created “Recognition Radio,” a series of four radio plays that amplify the Black experience.

The radio-play option is piggybacking on our podcast moment. According to PodcastHosting.org, as of October 2020, there were more than 1.5 million podcasts and 34 million episodes and 75% of Americans are familiar with the term “podcasting.”

'Keep employing actors'

With Broadway dark for at least another six months, Dori Berinstein has no opening nights to get to, but the producer of “Legally Blonde” hasn't been idle.

“I've never been busier,” said Berinstein, whose Broadway musical, "The Prom," becomes a Ryan Murphy movie musical starring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and James Cordon on Netflix on Dec. 11. 

Berinstein, co-founder and CEO of the Broadway Podcast Network, is looking to radio plays as part salve, part savior.

“I've been leaning into audio dramas and trying to figure out how to keep storytelling alive in the digital medium and keep employing actors during this horrible period of time,” she said. “It's going to be a while and we want to keep as many people as we can working.” 

Her network has created:

• “Bleeding Love,” a 90-minute musical podcast play in which "a starry-eyed teen cellist risks leaving her apartment to win the love of the rebel punk next door."
• “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors,” an 80-minute play with Chris Sieber, John Stamos, Ashley Parker and Laura Benanti, about a mild-mannered English real-estate agent who meets his new client "who also just happens to be the most terrifying and ferocious monster the world has ever known."
• "As the Curtain Rises: Broadway's First Digital Soap Opera," a campy radio soap full of inside-Broadway references and starry cameos "created and recorded entirely in quarantine."

“It will never replace live theater, but it's so intimate because it's right in your ear and it is really a transporting experience," Berinstein said. "It's a different way to tell stories, with theater talent and theater stories keeping our love of theater front of mind.”

'Recognition Radio'

Meanwhile, the 48-year-old professional Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, New York, is melding two pivotal moments — the pandemic and a reckoning on race — to present its "Recognition Radio" series, four plays that explore the Black experience.

They are: "Feeding Beatrice: A Gothic Tale," by Kirsten Greenidge; "The Bleeding Class," by Chisa Hutchinson; "We Are Continuous," by Harrison David Rivers; and (starting Dec. 8) "The Resurrection of Michelle Morgan," by Christina Anderson.

Geva even suggests how to listen: "We invite you to cozy up in your favorite jammies and get yourself a snack — your favorite jam on bread, a cold glass of milk, or maybe something fit for a campfire, like hot chocolate, s’mores and popcorn. Then, dim your lights and light a flickering candle. If you’re brave, spread out a sleeping bag on the floor, and let your imagination run …" 

As with many of the new audio plays, "Recognition Radio" has a view-by date: "Feeding Beatrice" is available through Dec. 15; the others end with 2020, on Dec. 31. The four-play series costs $60.

Public Theater, public radio

Elliott Forrest couldn't bear the thought of a blank space next to 2020.

The WQXR classical-radio host knew that New York Public Radio had a rich tradition of radio dramas, a tradition he rekindled in recent years with annual productions of “A Christmas Carol” on sister station WNYC.

He got the green light to explore partnerships with existing New York theaters to bring their shows to public-radio air. Then the coronavirus red light stopped all theater, imperiling another New York institution: The Public Theater’s free Shakespeare in the Park. 

"When I started to talk to The Public, I envisioned this history, a list of all the plays of Shakespeare in the Park since — whatever it was, in the '60s, I guess, when Joe Papp started this,” he said. “The idea that 2020 would be blank was extremely painful to me.”

Forrest, who lives in Nyack, New York, started conversations that led to a serialized audio-play production of “Richard II” over four nights in July, led by Andre Holland in the title role in a production conceived for the radio and directed by Saheem Ali.

"Richard II" was a start, said Forrest, who earned a producer's credit. "This is something The Public feels is a part of their portfolio going forward."

There is no blank space next to 2020, Forrest said with pride.

“It will be an asterisk, but 'Richard II' will be there,” he said. “There was a Shakespeare in the Park — on the radio."

A shift at Williamstown

To hear Susan Stroman tell it, Williamstown artistic director Mandy Greenfield wasn't giving COVID the final say.

"Mandy was so angry at the virus that this virus would take work away from actors and creative people that she called Audible and she said, 'What if you picked up these plays?' And they did," Stroman said. "It really is kudos to Mandy and Audible for carrying it forward in a different way. We're all still creating, but we've all had to figure out how to do it in a new way."

Greenfield's call was really her way of taking Kate Navin up on her offer.

Navin is artistic producer for Audible Theater, the branch of the Newark, New Jersey-based company that is part brick-and-mortar theater, The Minetta Lane, and part burgeoning library of audio plays.

"We've been having the conversations at Audible, sort of like, 'What is our role in this moment? What are we going to do?'" Navin said. "So I was well-positioned when Mandy called. I had been thinking: 'Who's going to take on this?' When Mandy called, it was an easy 'Yes.' I was thrilled to get that phone call."

Anna Chlumsky of HBO's "Veep" stars in the Stroman-directed "Photograph 51." She said she was "cautiously game" when she heard about the change from canceled play to audio play.

The rehearsals were conducted via Amazon Chime. 

Audible sent each actor a laptop that a sound engineer could monitor remotely to capture each performance in the actors' homes. Then, Audible editors and producers wove in sound effects and music to create a seamless piece.

Stroman, who said months of remote meetings have turned her into "a Zoom queen," relished the rehearsal time.

"It's definitely a play where you dissect it, character-wise, and making sure that we really understand the story, because there's no visual," she said. "I need to hear it really in their voices.

Navin, at Audible, said audio requires a different sort of performance, one she said was best summed up by British actress Carey Mulligan, who performed Dennis Kelly's solo work, "Girls & Boys."

"Standing on the stage and delivering it to 400 people every night was a very different experience than committing it to audio where she thought of it more like 'I'm sitting in a bar telling the story to a dear friend,'" Navin said. "And it feels like that when you listen, it feels like Carey is telling just you this really deeply personal story."

'The gold standard'

When the theater department of Rowan College of South Jersey presented "War of the Worlds" last month, director Deborah Bradshaw said, her students had never heard a radio play, let alone the most-famous radio play, the one that had people believing that aliens were invading New Jersey on Halloween 1938.

"This was, of course, the gold standard," she said. "It brought so many conversations into my classroom. They couldn't believe that this story was 82 years old. They were shocked at the impact that it had in the moment on that audience in 1938 and how people believed everything they heard from what they believed to be a trusted source. It had so much relevance to now."

Her students were so taken with the production — presented on Zoom, with a cast of students, faculty and community members — they wondered when the next one would be. Bradshaw will oblige, with "A Christmas Carol," at 7 p.m., Dec. 16. (Get details by emailing her at bartley@rcsj.edu.)

A Poe mashup

Meanwhile, at The Eagle Theatre in Hammonton, New Jersey, outside Atlantic City, new artistic director Chris Miller turned to Edgar Allan Poe, directing and editing “Poe Re-Deranged,” a full-length audio play by Pete Gambino that Miller said was a Poe mashup envisioned as more of an audiobook. (It is available on Audible).

Miller said "the jury is still out" on whether The Eagle, a 130-seat Equity theater, will try another radio play. Creating it meant recording actors on Zoom, splicing the work together line by line, and layering on the soundtrack over several months. A photo of his computer screen shows "what behind-the-scenes looks like nowadays," a Herculean string of individual tracks.

Miller said he doubts audiences will listen to a 2½-hour play in one sitting. 

"That's not how people consume audio, anymore," he said. "I think the audio book listener and maybe theater people who enjoy audio books will benefit from it because it'll give them that experience. But they're able to digest it the way they typically digest audio books, which may be a half hour here, 15 minutes there."

Theaters have to try whatever they can to keep the lights on, he said, including audio plays.

"I think all theaters right now, if they're not scared, then they're not really thinking," Miller said.

Give a listen

Audible Theater: https://www.audible.com/ep/theater

The 2020 Williamstown Theatre Festival: https://wtfestival.org/shows-events/

The Public Theatre's Shakespeare in the Park radio production of "Richard II" on WNYC: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/free-shakespeare-podcast-richard-ii/episodes

 The Broadway Podcast Network: https://broadwaypodcastnetwork.com/

Geva Theatre Center's "Recognition Radio": https://recognition-radio.com/ or https://gevatheatre.org/

The Eagle Theater's "Poe Re-Deranged": https://www.audible.com/pd/Poe-Re-Deragned-Audiobook/B08MQRBJ5L

Rowan College of South Jersey's "A Christmas Carol": To get a link, email Deborah Bradshaw at bartley@rcsj.edu.