Listening to a radio play is an enchanting experience \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 no dead air allowed on radio, of course.<\/p>\n
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\u2019ll get to see the whole thing play out.<\/p>\n
Both scripts were written by Nancy Tapley, one \u2013 Familiar Faces \u2013 while she was a university student at Queen\u2019s and the other \u2013 Connections \u2013 just recently.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will be the world premiere of Connections,\u201d laughs Tapley. \u201cIt\u2019s a true story about how great events impact real people and you don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery family takes a journey as the years go by. There are things that happen on that journey that get lost. They don\u2019t get told \u2013 they vanish into the mists of time. This was a story I didn\u2019t even know about until my mother finally said something about it. There are interesting things that people don\u2019t think are significant but they are important to your family\u2019s story. We hope that people will enjoy this first and foremost but that they will go back and talk about some of their connections.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t\t