Listening to a radio play is an enchanting experience – the actors have only their voices to convey everything the listener needs to know, peppered with a few sound effects for good measure, while you get to fill in the blanks with your imagination.
Watching one in action is delightful. Not only do you get to hear the voices, but you can see their facial expressions, laugh at the antics of the special effects crew trying to mimic background sounds, and enjoy the musical interludes – no dead air allowed on radio, of course.
For two shows at the Dwight Community Centre on June 18, a group of voice actors, musicians, and a radio host will recreate the fun of a radio drama complete with partially ad-libbed advertisements just as you would have experienced it on the radio before televisions began their reign. Except that you’ll get to see the whole thing play out.
Both scripts were written by Nancy Tapley, one – Familiar Faces – while she was a university student at Queen’s and the other – Connections – just recently.
“This will be the world premiere of Connections,” laughs Tapley. “It’s a true story about how great events impact real people and you don’t even realize the connections. Never mind six degrees of separation, we are all one. It starts in Russia at the start of the Russian revolution and it winds up on Lake of Bays.
“Every family takes a journey as the years go by. There are things that happen on that journey that get lost. They don’t get told – they vanish into the mists of time. This was a story I didn’t even know about until my mother finally said something about it. There are interesting things that people don’t think are significant but they are important to your family’s story. We hope that people will enjoy this first and foremost but that they will go back and talk about some of their connections.”
A rehearsal for Come Listen to the Radio (clockwise from top left): Bob Barnhart as the radio host; Barb Mason, Charmian McCullough and Vaughn Adamson provide a musical interlude; Sharon Webster sings; David and Megan Tapley (at left) provide the special effects; Nancy Tapley wrote the scripts.
The radio personality, played by Bob Barnhart, will tie together the shows, voiced by Ginny Burgess, Mirella Lisi, Christine Stefanczuk, Rick Stronks, Nancy Tapley, and Sharon Webster, and the musical interludes by trio Barb Mason, Vaughn Adamson and Charmian McCullough. David and Megan Tapley provide the special effects.
Come Listen to the Radio plays at the Dwight Community Centre on June 18 at 2pm and 7pm. Tickets are $15 and are available at the Dwight Public Library. Proceeds from the shows go to the Friends of the Dwight Library.
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