Community Theater Green Room Discussion Board: Radio dramas

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   For about the last 10 years, on and off, we have worked with our local radio station to produce a Christmas radio play.  We have done "Miracle on 34th St.", "A Christmas Carol", "A Wonderful Life", and several others, some more than once.  We have been able to utilize a lot of people that havent, for whatever reason, been able to participate in shows at the theatre, but feel that they can devote one or two evenings to rehearsal time and an evening for the live broadcast.  We have also worked (in conjunction with another  community theatre) with the radio station of a nearby state university to produce several Christmas variety shows, complete with live big band music, and two productions of "The War of the Worlds" at Halloween, once on the 60th anniversary of Wells' historic broadcast. Some of these, the variety shows and "The War of the Worlds", were also done before a live audience.
We have had GREAT fun with these, and have had a terrific response.  We are now in the process of setting up the arrangements to do one this Christmas, with hopefully others to be done at Valentine's Day, Fourth of July, and one or two other holidays. It's a wonderful varient on the stage performances that we usually do.
I was wondering if anyone else on this board has ventured into radio drama and is willing to share experiences, gaffs, advice, public domain scripts that might be appropriate, etc.
If you haven't done it, I highly recommend it.....and you can charge admission if you do it in front of a live audience! It really takes you back to the nostalgia of those old "radio days"!
I

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red diva Celebrity Joined: 5/15/06 Online Status: Offline Posts: 199	Topic: Radio dramas Posted: 9/27/06 at 4:01pm
	For about the last 10 years, on and off, we have worked with our local radio station to produce a Christmas radio play. We have done "Miracle on 34th St.", "A Christmas Carol", "A Wonderful Life", and several others, some more than once. We have been able to utilize a lot of people that havent, for whatever reason, been able to participate in shows at the theatre, but feel that they can devote one or two evenings to rehearsal time and an evening for the live broadcast. We have also worked (in conjunction with another community theatre) with the radio station of a nearby state university to produce several Christmas variety shows, complete with live big band music, and two productions of "The War of the Worlds" at Halloween, once on the 60th anniversary of Wells' historic broadcast. Some of these, the variety shows and "The War of the Worlds", were also done before a live audience. We have had GREAT fun with these, and have had a terrific response. We are now in the process of setting up the arrangements to do one this Christmas, with hopefully others to be done at Valentine's Day, Fourth of July, and one or two other holidays. It's a wonderful varient on the stage performances that we usually do. I was wondering if anyone else on this board has ventured into radio drama and is willing to share experiences, gaffs, advice, public domain scripts that might be appropriate, etc. If you haven't done it, I highly recommend it.....and you can charge admission if you do it in front of a live audience! It really takes you back to the nostalgia of those old "radio days"! I
	"I've worked long and hard to earn the right to be called Diva!"

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red diva Celebrity Joined: 5/15/06 Online Status: Offline Posts: 199	Posted: 9/27/06 at 4:05pm
	Oops....sorry about the placement of this topic. I thought I was putting it in the "other topics" forum! Please forgive and respond to it anyway!
	"I've worked long and hard to earn the right to be called Diva!"
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castMe Celebrity Joined: 11/02/05 Online Status: Offline Posts: 206	Posted: 9/27/06 at 5:04pm
	We wanted to present "The Hitchhiker" and "Sorry, Wrong Number" on stage and broadcast at the same time a number of years ago. Our local radio station was very enthusastic about the broadcast, but the theater company could never get a hold of the people who held the broadcast rights to those shows. How did your company handle this. We would love to have that opportunity in this town.
	Investigate. Imagine. Choose.
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red diva Celebrity Joined: 5/15/06 Online Status: Offline Posts: 199	Posted: 9/28/06 at 8:12am
	I really hope you get to do this, castMe - a great deal of fun, and very satisfying. And a crowd pleaser! My husband is a great fan of old radio shows, and was able to research and download public domain scripts from the internet. Of course there are radio plays/readers' theatre scripts out there which should be listed in the French or Dramatists catalogues, but if you want the flavor of old time radio, the original scripts are the best way to go. I'm at school right now and I don't have any way of contacting my husband until late afternoon, but I would be happy to ask him for the website where these scripts are available. I'll post again as soon as I have that. I also suspect that if you Google something like "vintage radio drama scripts" you might come up with some. Anyone else on the board have any ideas where to access radio scripts?
	"I've worked long and hard to earn the right to be called Diva!"
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Mike Polo Admin Group Community Theater Green Room Joined: 2/01/04 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 286	Posted: 9/28/06 at 8:41am
	We ended up writing our own... special circumstances. I was just starting the first blocking rehearsal for "Ladies of the Camillias" when our treasurer came into the theater with a letter from the publisher pulling our rights; seems a professional group in Philadelphia had decided to do the show. We whipped up a script in about 10 days and had a very successful run, but I wouldn't recommend the method to anyone... it takes a lot more time and editing to make something like that work well.
	Mike Polo Community Theater Green Room http://www.communitytheater.org
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dougb Celebrity Joined: 3/30/04 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 148	Posted: 9/28/06 at 10:43am
	We used to do a lot of radio shows and they were very popular. Alas, our schedule has been too full the last two years to fit them in. The actors liked the short rehearsal schedule, the audiences liked to see the sfx being done live. We have a good friend of our theater who has a syndicated radio show (Imagination Theater and the Harry Nile Series - you can listen to them on XMRadio channel 163 - the shows air 8 times a day 5 days a week) who lets us use his scripts. We do three half hour programs in an evening and write our own spoof of commercials to run during the shows. If anyone is interested I would be glad to contact him to see if he would be interested in licensing the shows to other theaters. Doug
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POB14 Celebrity Joined: 7/01/05 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 349	Posted: 9/29/06 at 9:45am
	We have a local theatre group doing Dracula for Hallowe'en. If you want, I can check with them to see where they got the script and license.
	POB Old Bugger, Curmudgeon, and Antisocial B**tard
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red diva Celebrity Joined: 5/15/06 Online Status: Offline Posts: 199	Posted: 9/29/06 at 12:00pm
	castMe - My husband should be posting the website for downloadable public domain radio scripts this afternoon, but I just found another one that looks pretty good. I haven't examined it thoroughly, but you might want to take a look at http://www.simplyscripts.com Hope that helps! red diva
	"I've worked long and hard to earn the right to be called Diva!"
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MartyW Celebrity Joined: 2/02/04 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 555	Posted: 9/29/06 at 12:35pm
	Thats a good one Red... Lori F. has been promoting that one at the playhouse for a while...
	Marty W "Till next we trod the boards.."
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red diva Celebrity Joined: 5/15/06 Online Status: Offline Posts: 199	Posted: 9/29/06 at 4:24pm
	Marty - do you mean that's a good website, or the idea to do a radio show is a good one? Or both? "Red" (indeed)
	"I've worked long and hard to earn the right to be called Diva!"
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