RadioTheatre’s 6th Annual “H. P. Lovecraft Festival” — Part II

RadioTheatre presents the 6th Annual H. P. Lovecraft FestivalAs promised two episodes back, GSAS! continues the seasonally-appropriate fare with another conversation with the vocal acrobats behind RadioTheatre‘s 6th Annual H. P. Lovecraft Festival.

Back on the mic are the excellent R. Patrick Alberty & Joshua Nicholson, along with RadioTheatre newcomer (& equally excellent voice-talent) Danielle Adams.

Listen in as Patrick, Danielle, Joshua & I discuss what it’s like to jump in and work with the RadioTheatre team for the first time, converting new theatre-goers into RadioTheatre groupies, the “theatre of the mind,” and what you can hear (& see!) next from their personal projects & RadioTheatre.

“You see the name ‘RadioTheatre,’ and immediately what comes to mind is the old ’40s, ’50s style, you see people dressed up, men in fedoras, you got the foley artist in the background…but this form of theatre that we do is completely unique…”

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The Cast & Director of “The Drunken City”

Battalion Theatre presents The Drunken CityNew on the scene Battalion Theatre presents their second production, where a night of excessive partying and drunken carousing with handsome strangers leads to unavoidable confrontations with the realities of the relationships between a young bachelorette and her circle of friends—Adam Bock’s The Drunken City. It’s a premise that could easily devolve into cliche, but wisely starts at cliche before delving into the humanity underneath.

Listen in as director Emma Johnson, and actors Christine Spang, Conrad LeBron, Dan Gonon, Elena Kritter, Gadi Rubin, and Kullan Sinclair Edberg, discuss starting your theatre company at CraftBar, how your interviewer looks like Rocket Raccoon, love & magic, and taking a cold hard look at your own relationships. Oh, and there’s an on-air selfie.

“The play is a comedy on the surface, but for me it’s a tragedy, it’s about the lies that we call truths in the battle against loneliness…those lies, when called truths, build up and become the foundations upon which we build our lives…”

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Rob Hille, Jenna Panther, and Justin Yorio, Artistic Directors of Amios, on “Seven Deadly Shotz”

Amios presents Seven Deadly Shotz

As the producer of Go See a Show!, I’m going to take off my “objectivity” hat for this episode. I already do so in the interview, as you’ll hear, so why not go whole hog?

I’m happy to report that the “want to make theatre? then throw down and make some f*cking theatre” mentality is alive and well in this town. And Amios is at the front of that charge, in the best of ways.

Frankly, this episode is about what I thought downtown theatre was going to be when I arrived in New York. Amios is making theatre the way I want to make theatre (and often do make theatre, sometimes with them — but they just do it a lot more often), with the kind of people I love to make theatre with. Amios says, “we’re not going to wait for an opportunity—we’re going to make an opportunity.” And they do it as friends.

The greatest parts of it are, they consistently do it with a high level of quality, and always while having a heck of a lot of fun.

The company is kicking off their 5th season with the return of their monthly Shotz series (you may remember it from episode 13 of this very podcast). Shotz always works around a theme, and this month, it’s the 7 deadly sins; so naturally, the show on October 7 will be, Seven Deadly Shotz. Full disclosure: I’m directing the one on “greed.”

Listen in as Artistic Directors Rob Hille, Jenna Panther, and Justin Yorio discuss how you draw a crowd to your off-off-Broadway show (beer helps, they say — who’d have thought?), how to give your collaborators a sense of ownership, sin, and wanting to watch your artist friends “work out.”

“…people are like, ‘how do you guys do all this stuff?’…and the reason that we can do it is because of our badass team of folks…it is a collective, as opposed to a typical theatre company, and more, ‘everybody’s in the trenches together, making stuff happen.’ It’s more sustainable that way…”

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