Storyteller to Dramatist -An Opportunity to Strut Your Stuff

Have you been itching to write radio plays? Here is a call for submissions from a troupe of players who can't pay you but will consider your work with enthusiasm and give you all they have to give... their talent and a new audience.

As a novelist, I see this as an opportunity to try out the genre but also to market books.. if you wrote a twenty minute drama or comedy from your novel it would give people a lot of reason to want to read the book! They can't pay, but besides being fun, this would be a chance to get one's work out there.

To wit:

American Radio Theater is a 501c3 non-profit. We have a two-prong approach to our mission. There are a lot of great stories that were on the radio back in the 1940s and 1950s, but their original recordings are lost or otherwise unavailable. For some of those, the scripts still exist, and ART brings those great stories back to life. But working on preserving the past isn't all we want to do. We also want to encourage new writers of radio-type audio plays, as well as preserving the techniques and production values learned when radio was live.

ART has an hour a week on the Radio Entertainment Network (REN), which is a syndicated service to the various blind and other groups--also available on the internet. (The same show is broadcast on Oregon Public Radio.) Jim Dolan, of REN, would like me to broadcast mostly new shows, but I can't produce enough of them, so I mix old-time-radio and new ART shows. He wants me to submit 55 minutes of content to him, because there are commercials that he needs to put in. Many of the Old-time-radio shows are 30 minutes long, which means I need a 15 or 20 minute show to fill out the "hour". Which is why this year I'm asking folks to consider writing a short story or play that could be adapted or produced by ART.

In radio format (basically double spaced), a page is roughly equal to a minute. We record using an ensemble of actors, all donating their time and talent. We have a couple of people who provide live sound effects, and then I add music and any other recorded sound effect as needed. After the show is completed (post-production), then copies are given out to the actors (and the writer), and are available to the public. This year we're working on putting together a pod-cast, off our web-site (www.AmericanRadioTheater.org).

We meet twice a month, on the first and third Mondays, 6:30 to 9:30, at a house in Madrona neighborhood of Seattle (south of the Arboretum). Our next meeting is on April 20. The time after that will be May 18 (I'm going on vacation going to Cincinnati and Los Angeles for OTR conventions.). Anyone can come, and be either an audience or an actor.

From a writer's viewpoint, a script submitted to and then modified and recorded by ART remains the property of ART, strictly in regards for the audio recording. The original story/script otherwise belongs to the author. We do have a contractual agreement that we have started to use.

Interested? Have questions? Contact Joy Jackson at JJLjackson@aol.com