I've been banished!

and other news

Last weekend we had a family roadtrip. My role is the driver. As the driver, I control the stereo. Naturally, I put on the audiobook for Coriolanus. My family fell instantly asleep and I enjoyed listening to the play.

My family eventually awoke and suffered silently while the play finished. However, it was when the next version of Coriolanus, the Arkangel version, popped from the queue that did I have a mutiny in the car.

Our lives were at risk, readers! I vehemently argued my case as driver of the car, father of the family, and student of Shakespeare to keep Coriolanus on. However, I finally relented when my wife said, “I banish you from discussing Coriolanus the rest of the weekend!”

I respond of course, with “I banish you!.” But the sentence had already been given. Taylor Swift sang through the speakers.

Somebody else as Coriolanus. 1798. Wikipedia.

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This might be the last post for two weeks. Prior to giving myself the job of volunteer Director, these next weeks were already going to be busy. But now, doubly so.

I have many updates.

Bitpunk.fm

I dropped off many cassettes in the mail today. Thank you everyone for your patience. Bitpunk.fm #21, Wyrd Whales is on the way to many of you. I’ve been way behind my physical mail but there are individual notes to each of you in the shipments.

Also, I think the price of shipments went up 25%! I will have to check on this later but it was significantly more expensive to ship things out.

Thanks to all my paid subscribers who support me send these tapes out in exchange for a postcard!

Poetry on Tape

Last week I posted a video on Propaganda and Political poems of WW1. A lot of this work was done when I was doing those war erasures and I summarized many of the poems from that period below.

Sadly, I will not have an episode for the next two weeks.

Hot Ghazal Summer

Luciana Moroianu is preparing a sizzling pdf edition of ghazals for those that submitted. I saw a preview of what she is cooking and it is on fire!

Coriolanus.fm

What’s the news?

Cast

Speaking of Luciana, she is joining the cast as Volumnia!

And the amazing Ramona Moth joins as well as Valeria!

There is a butterfly speech in Act I that had Ramona’s name all over it! My Arden Shakespeare is full of highlights in the Scene in Act I with Volumnia, Valeria, and Virgilia. It’s one of my favorites in the play and I’m excited to hear Ramona and Luciana in action.

There’s more casting decisions happening behind the scenes, so stay tuned! I am restacking all the announcements as they happen live.

I am overjoyed to see the support of everyone cheering on the announcements! I know it’s community theatre, but I’m glad we can give each actor some excitement boost and I’m very happy to see the communal support!

Narrator

One of the difficulties in audio is how to deal with scene changes. Even in professional plays, the scene changes, however brief, allow the audience to understand that we are somewhere else now. That’s very hard in audio.

So, even in the pilot I had this narrator. But the narrator speaks in prose and in Coriolanus.fm there will be some more need for the narrator to deal with the compression of scenes.

Anyway, after many discussions with some of you, here’s where we’ve landed.

The narrator will be “a poet.”

Most of us in this play are poets! The narrator can “be” a poet and speak in verse, or a sonnet before each Act to let the audience know — this is a new act, things have changed.

We have a poet-in-residence who has not yet been announced. Partly because I wanted to clarify why we have a poet-in-residence.

Timeline

I have with me, a printed out version of the first three Acts. Over the next two weeks I will be working on a promptbook which will include the cuts, the sound direction, and voice direction for the cast.

Because we are all asynchronous, I think a little bit of voice direction will help. We don’t want one actor to read a line as humorous, and the other as serious. Which, is easy to do.

So I hope to have Act I to the actors the week of August 10th. With this two week prep time, I’m hoping we can all read our lines in one week. Then a week for the audio design. Hopefully, I can have further acts available for the cast ahead of schedule.

We are in no rush really, but neither do we want this to drag out.

When the first act is ready, we can have a live listening party!

What to do in the meantime?

The anticipation builds. If I have not got back to you, please ping me. I will be able to respond to DMs. The last week has been a whirlwind.

The voice actors have some homework anyway to read and watch a few versions of the play so that in two weeks you can commit to the vocal performance.

Ramona Moth has helped with the title banners, thank you! If there is a visual artist who wants to help make a cover image for Act I it will be the “hero” image for the post.

Thank you everyone for your excitement, support, and attention! I am very excited to get this rolling!!