Theatre of the mind: an Experiment in Modern American Audio Fiction
Abstract
This project involved the creation of more than five hours of audio fiction, most of which is in the fonn of sketch comedy. The first segment of this paper, Why a Senior Scholar Project in Radio Theatre, will lead the interested reader through my life, up to the decision to become a Senior Scholar at Colby. The second segment, entitled The Project, details the work that went into the completion of this project. This segment is divided into Semester One and Semester Two. The real meat of the project is in the tapes themselves. The first five tapes are Gale Force Theatre. These are nine, half-hour sketch comedy shows, recorded in an eight-track studio. I wrote one quarter of these sketches myself, and produced and co-engineered the shows. Unfortunately, the recorded episodes included here are of a less clean quality than might be hoped, as they are often fifth generation recordings. On the fifth tape (side 10) I have included a few sketches which I wrote and helped produce and perform at WTOS. The sixth tape (sides 11 and 12) is my longer work, The Four Story Building, which consists of only two stories, and should be an extremely clean recording. All thanks to Colby College, Jim Boylan, and the Senior Scholars' Program.