Broad Channel & the Audio Option

Here are some thoughts on attending a new play reading last night. The play was called Broad Channel by James Bosley. It is not really fair to review a play reading, but I will say that it was quite good. It is a story about international, cross-generational, art theft. A working class American family has the art and has had it for a two generations. An upper-class European woman wants it back.

Since this was a reading, and not a staged one, with actors standing in place. I decided to experience most of it with my eyes closed, as if it were a radio play. That worked out quite well. The play would make an effective radio production. But the thing is, it probably never will be produced for audio. It is doubtful that the audio option is even considered by most USA playwrights. A play in the USA, if it is lucky, has a life of being produced in the theater, or adapted to film. If neither of these work out the play is a dead paper entirety. Professional audio theater has been more or less dead in the USA for about 50 years so it is understandable that it is not considered. This is a shame. This play, when heard with eyes closed, came alive and would afford itself quite nicely to audio production. It was not necessary to see the painting in question, the house of the working class family, the cut of the art investigator's suit. All these things can be easily seen in the mind of the imaginative listener.

But that will never happen. Here it is all or nothing. A play is produced in a theater, or made into a film (very unlikely in this case). Those are the options and that's it. If the play can't get a production in theater or film/TV it is dead, type on paper or a text file in memory. Theater, film/video productions are costly enterprises and most plays sit in a drawer somewhere like a unemployed actor, waiting for the phone to ring. Audio production is very inexpensive in comparison and should be considered in many cases. We have LA Theater Works, but they can only get to a few plays and they must have an expensive overhead too with the insistence on recording with a live audience.

It is time for an explosion of professionally audio drama in the USA. With the advent of the iPod and such devices, why can't commuters be listening to a good play rather than music. Of course there are rights, union, and ownership issues. But these can be resolved somehow to the satisfaction of all, somehow, after no doubt a good deal of haggling. We can't let art suffer behind the need to make a buck, can we? (Well, or course we can and do, but let's hope for better.)

Boats on a River

This is a well crafted play by Julie Marie Myatt which I had the pleasure of hearing on The Play's the Thing. It is an LA Theater Works audio adaptation of the theatrical production originally commissioned by The Guthrie Theater.

The subject matter is the Cambodian child sex industry. It takes on the subject through the personal stories of people who work in a rescue shelter where they attempt to rehabilitate the girls caught up in this. We look at their motivations for the work they are involved in. The most curious is an American, Sidney Webb, who we find out is in fact married to a former "bar girl". They have two children, but despite that it is not working out for Mr. Webb. He cannot heal the wounds that she continues to carry. He is a man on a mission to save, and is frustrated by failing with the one closest to him. But why must he be the hero? Is it because of the guilt he carries? There is a scene between Webb and his wife which is the strongest in the play.

There is also a zealous young American who is working for an international rescue agency. His batched raid on a brothel opens the play. He needs to be a hero too. He also fails. The scenes between Webb and this young man are also quite effective.

We hear a recorded diary of an American sex tourist apparently on his first trip. Somehow this part was the weakest in the audio production. That could be because the multimedia video portion of the stage production cannot be used in the audio adaptation. He is a rather vague entity. But then again, this is not a play about the perpetrators. There is plenty of that sort of thing elsewhere and the lack of it in this production is one of its strengths. This is not an exploitation piece.

We hear the story and dreams of the three girls rescued in the raid. Their desires and dreams are small, to have some candy, own a bike, and huge, to have a new life as a boy.

The play uses the most effective way of telling such a story. It focuses on a few people and studies them rather than a just-the- facts sort of agitprop journalism. It is a thought provoking entertainment concerning an issue of global importance. As Julie Marie Myatt says in the interview portion of the "The Play's the Thing" presentation, the issue is not just in Cambodia, but everywhere.

I don't know where this can be heard. I couldn't find it on the LA Theater Works site. Maybe it will show up there later. I heard it via real audio at The Play's the Thing, but the week long freebee stream is now timed out.

God's Man in Texas

This is an LA Theater Works production. They play their shows on KPCC which is in Southern California. I get it on the WWW.

God's Man in Texas by David Rambo is an entertaining drama having to do with the big business of the religious/entertainment industry.

All the action takes place in a Texas mega church. The revered pastor of the church is aging and on the way out. The committee set up to replace him is having new preachers come in and give sample sermons. The figures, the approval rating, the amount of contributions, and the number of souls saved are all looked at in judging the new candidate and comparing him to others.
But there are other not so transparent political games going on in the church which might, more that these other things, determine the ultimate decision.

This is a full length play and it is amusing and somewhat frightening throughout. This form of TV age religion. so powerful in the USA is examined in an artful, intelligent way that never seems preachy or didactic.

This, like other LA Theater Works productions, is performed before a live audience. I tend to prefer studio productions without an audience, but LA Theater Works radio plays are generally topnotch with fine actors from stage screen and audio drama. They are most often adaptations of stage plays as is this fine play by David Rambo.

It is available via real audio stream on The Play's The Thing site until Sept. 20, 2008. And it can be purchased on CD from LA Theater Works anytime.