HEAR Now Festival

Workshop 101: Creating and Podcasting Audio Fiction
Your Must Register For This Workshop Here

Workshop 101 is a series of Master Classes for producers and performers that will take place online June 11-14, 2020 as part of the virtual HEAR Now Festival.

These sessions will examine creating short-form content for podcast audiences.

In three and a half days, instructors take participants through the basics of writing, directing, producing and performing audio theater works.

Not only will participants get the opportunity to interact with their accomplished teachers, but they will also get to meet many professionals throughout the field, who can become valued contacts.

Workshop 101 meets daily via Zoom video conferencing

Workshop 102, Marketing Through Creative Coaching and More
Your Must Register For This Workshop Here

A series of Master Classes for producers and performers that will take place online June 11-14, 2020 as part of the virtual HEAR Now Festival.
These sessions will exam Marketing as more than social media and where to place your programs, but how to find your market as an audio artist and value your work.


Thursday, June 11, 2020 - Sessions will take place over Zoom

11:00 am - 12:30 pm: Meet Your Faculty / Workshop Weekend Goals
Emily Labes & Judith Kampfner, David Benedict, and Sean Pratt

2:00pm - 3:30 pm: Marketing Basics
Emily Labes & Judith Kampfner

4:30pm - 6:00 pm: Marketing Dos and Don'ts
Sean Pratt & David Benedict

 HEAR Now will once again be presenting  A Celebration of Mark Twain as part of the 2020 Festival.

This year's Festival focuses on Twain's stories that feature female characters from his fiction works like Huckleberry Finn as well as his non-fiction journals and newspaper articles.

Carol Monda and Sean Pratt are this year's Mark Twain mentors and will be heard on Saturday along with the winners of this year's Jeff Kraus Performance Scholarships.

Today's narrators are:
Teri Clark Linden reading from Eve's Diary;
Steve White reading from Californian Tale;
Hillary Huber reading from Huck Finn;
Lisa Ware reading from In Defense of Harriet Shelley;
and special guest Rob Alvey discussing the real Becky Thatcher

These readings go 'live' today and will be available on the HEAR Now website to enjoy throughout the Festival weekend.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO CELEBRATING MARK TWAIN.

NATF Playhouse Featuring 2020 Artist's PLATINUM PAGE and PODCAST PALOOZA opens Thursday June 11, 2020 at NOON. From Platinum to Bronze, you'll hear the best of this year's audio fiction.

Running June 11 - December 31, 2020.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
Premiere - June 12, 2020 - Debs in Canton with Phil Proctor as Eugene Victor Debs and Melinda Peterson, Robert Fass, PJ Ochlan, LJ Ganser, Doug Shapiro, Anne Bobby, and Micah Gellert. Written by Yale Strom and Elizabeth Schwartz.

Be sure to come back on Friday, June 12th for the premiere of this new audio play.

Additional Featured Programs:
The New Silence by Brian Price with Dion Graham, Jane Oppenheimer and an original score by Jason Kao Hwang.

William's Leap for Freedom by Renee Pringle with Dion Graham, Barbara Rosenblat, and a full cast.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO PODCAST PALOOZA

Join the HEAR Now Festival as we open our 8th annual Festival with examples of INNOVATION in the world of audio story-telling. New technologies and story-telling techniques will be highlighted.

Join Val Vigoda and her partner, world- acclaimed composer Ryan O'Connell, in a live Zoom Video Conference as they discuss the intersection of art and technology following the live performance of a song from their award-winning Off-Broadway musical ‘Ernest Shackleton Loves Me’ (a wildly inventive musical adventure telling the story of a sleep-deprived single mom struggling to balance her family and career as a video game music composer) as well as examples of new music they have been creating in quarantine, with Val in Seattle and Ryan in Los Angeles.

This program is made possible in part by the Francis Family Foundation

Be sure to register for the Innovations presentation so you get the Zoom video link to attend. Zoom links will be sent an hour before the event.

  On Wednesday, October 16, 2019, as part of the 147th AES Conference, The HEAR Now Festival presented "An Intimate Evening with Tesla and Twain" featuring the original audio play "Tesla and Twain: Annihilators of Distance" by Butch D'Ambrosio.

The time is October 1900 and Mark Twain has just returned from Europe and has moved into the Earlington Hotel (formerly the Gerlach Hotel, where Tesla once lived in the late 1890s and is now the Radio Waves Building) while his family is looking for a new home.

On this night Twain is spending an evening with his friend Nikola Tesla at the as they discuss the latest inventions which will lead to, and, revolutionize communications.

This performance, featuring P.J. Ochlan as Tesla, Robert Alvey as Twain, with Radio World Edior Paul McLane as the hotel manager.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO Tesla and Twain: Annihilators of Distance

Come spend time networking with the Festival artists featured throughout the day and into the night.

HEAR Now will host a MAIN ROOM and 3 BREAK OUT ROOMS at our nightly After Parties. Once you are welcomed into the Zoom session our moderator will let you know who else is in the Break Out Rooms so you can choose who you'd like to join.

Door Prize Giveaways nightly from Soundbooth Theater...

Be sure to register for the AFTER PARTY so you get the Zoom video link to attend. Zoom links will be sent an hour before the event.

Workshop 102, Marketing Through Creative Coaching and More
Your Must Register For This Workshop Here

Friday, June 12th
Sessions will take place over Zoom

9:30 - 10:30 am: Individual sessions with Judith Kampfner can be scheduled for this time.

11:00 am - 12:30 pm: Marketing Your Production or Business
Emily Labes & David Benedict

2:00 - 3:30 pm: Compare and contrast marketing oneself for different audiences
Judith Kampfner & Sean Pratt

4:30 - 6:00 pm -- Zoom Mixer

Workshop 101: Creating and Podcasting Audio Fiction
Your Must Register For This Workshop Here

Workshop 101 is a series of Master Classes for producers and performers that will take place online June 11-14, 2020 as part of the virtual HEAR Now Festival.

These sessions will examine creating short-form content for podcast audiences.

In three and a half days, instructors take participants through the basics of writing, directing, producing and performing audio theater works.

Not only will participants get the opportunity to interact with their accomplished teachers, but they will also get to meet many professionals throughout the field, who can become valued contacts.

Workshop 101 meets daily via Zoom video conferencing

The Veldt by Ray Bradbury
Story By: Ray Bradbury
Drama Adaptation By: Mike Walker

Cast
TV Announcer: David Rapkin Peter: Michael Wachter
Wendy: Reyna Shaskan Lydia: Jennifer van Dyck
George: David Slavin Ms Kim: Nancy Wu
The Room: John Henry Cox David: Richmond Hoxie
Sound Production at CDM Studios
Director/Producer: Judith Kampfner

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Judith Kampfner is a producer, writer and playwright for the stage and radio. Listen to her unique form of storytelling.

Judith began working at the Australian Broadcasting Company as a trainee radio producer and then Executive Producer. She has since worked at BBC, NPR and WNYC, where she was Senior Producer on the pilot phase of Studio 360.

As a writer, Kampfner is a dramaturg and editor with playwrights working for radio. She has adapted stage plays and novels for radio, written and co-written radio dramas and is a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women.

 HEAR Now will once again be presenting  A Celebration of Mark Twain as part of the 2020 Festival.

This year's Festival focuses on Twain's stories that feature female characters from his fiction works like Huckleberry Finn as well as his non-fiction journals and newspaper articles.

Carol Monda and Sean Pratt are this year's Mark Twain mentors and will be heard on Saturday along with the winners of this year's Jeff Kraus Performance Scholarships.

Today's narrators are:
Byron Wagner reading from a selection of short works including The First Woman In Nevada, Buying Gloves in Gibraltar, and Speech on the Babies;
Larry Oliver reading from To Women an Irregular Toast;
Rachanee Lumayno reading from Recollections of Joan of Arc, Part 1;
Dan Ware reading from Advice to Little Girls;
Rhonda Singler-Ware reading from A Murder, A Mystery, A Marriage

These readings go 'live' today and will be available on the HEAR Now website to enjoy throughout the Festival weekend.

'Debs In Canton' is an original radioplay written by Elizabeth Schwartz & Yale Strom, starring Phil Proctor and featuring Robert Fass, PJ Ochlan, LJ Ganser, Melinda Peterson, Doug Shapiro, Anne Bobby and Micah Gellert
Produced & Directed by Sue Zizza with music by Yale Strom.

American labor leader Eugene V. Debs gave a speech in June of 1918 to a movement rally in which he condemned US involvement in the First World War. Debs was jailed for sedition and went on to run for president from his cell. This historical fiction by Schwartz and Strom explores what Debs' life might have been in the months leading up to this seminal moment of American history.

Dialogue and Voice Over for Interactive Media

Dialogue and narration are produced for games and interactive media in fundamentally different ways than for linear media like audio books, podcasts, or film. Veterans of audio and dialogue production across numerous media will have a live Zoom panel discussion that will highlight contrasting priorities and challenges in process, marketing, and technical areas between games and interactive media, and animation, podcasting, and other voice recording situations. Those interested in broadening their markets or just curious about how recording dialogue for video games differs from other kinds of voice recording will find this session enlightening.

Be sure to register for the Dialogue and Voice Over for Interactive Media so you get the Zoom video link to attend. Zoom links will be sent an hour before the event.

Producer's Meet & Greet is for Workshop 101 & 102 Participants
and Podcast Palooza Producers (as space allows)
This is your opportunity to meet with some of the members of the Pitch Panel happening the next afternoon.

This session is followed up by a more formal Pitch Panel, Saturday, June 13, 2020.

2020 Independent Audiobook Awards finalists and presenters meet for a pre-awards virtual Cocktail Party.

Be sure to register for the IAA Cocktail PARTY so you get the Zoom video link to attend. Zoom links will be sent an hour before the event.

The 2020 Independent Audiobook Awards. This premier awards program recognizing distinction in independently published audiobooks and spoken word entertainment.

Winners will be revealed at tonight's awards ceremony featuring Lisa Flanagan.

Produced by Jeff Kafer and Lauri Jo Daniels.

At the dawn of a new decade, a pair of young lovers are forced apart by a pandemic raging across the entire country. The year is 2020.

When Felicity, a 20-something Events Strategist living in New York City, is driven to her childhood home in Westchester by the coronavirus lockdown, her blossoming relationship with Ford, also a 20-something city-dweller, is thrown into limbo. With their present compromised, Felicity wonders whether she and Ford actually have a future after all. One night in the midst of the pandemic, Felicity and her sister, Lauren, engage in some drunken antics that lead Felicity to slide into the DMs of Julian Child, a social media influencer with millions of followers. Much to her surprise, Julian takes notice of her message and begins to strike up a correspondence with her. Suddenly, Felicity finds herself at the center of an all-consuming digital love triangle with too much time to think and no ability to act.

Inspired by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s celebrated novel, Love in the Time of Cholera, Soundbooth Theater’s Love in the Time of Corona is equal parts escapist satire, melodrama, and commentary on how a global health crisis at the pinnacle of the digital age has affected the way young people engage with one another. Written by Emily Labes, the audioplay stars Annie Ellicott as Felicity, Jeff Hays as Ford, Justin Thomas James as Julian, Gary Francis Furlong as the narrator, and Laurie Catherine Winkel as Lauren, and features music and sound effects by Ahmed Mahmoud.

Come spend time networking with the Festival artists featured throughout the day and into the night.

HEAR Now will host a MAIN ROOM and 3 BREAK OUT ROOMS at our nightly After Parties. Once you are welcomed into the Zoom session our moderator will let you know who else is in the Break Out Rooms so you can choose who you'd like to join.

Door Prize Giveaways nightly from Soundbooth Theater...

Be sure to register for the AFTER PARTY so you get the Zoom video link to attend. Zoom links will be sent an hour before the event.

Workshop 102, Marketing Through Creative Coaching and More
Your Must Register For This Workshop Here

Saturday, June 13th
Sessions will take place over Zoom

11:00am-12:30pm - Finalize Your Pitch
Workshop team follow-ups with participants and review the pitch presentations and possible next steps for publishers.


3:00pm-4:30pm - The Pitch Panel 
Participants will pitch their projects to a panel of judges. Judges will ask follow-up questions and explore the pitches more fully.

Workshop 101: Creating and Podcasting Audio Fiction
Your Must Register For This Workshop Here

Workshop 101 is a series of Master Classes for producers and performers that will take place online June 11-14, 2020 as part of the virtual HEAR Now Festival.

These sessions will examine creating short-form content for podcast audiences.

In three and a half days, instructors take participants through the basics of writing, directing, producing and performing audio theater works.

Not only will participants get the opportunity to interact with their accomplished teachers, but they will also get to meet many professionals throughout the field, who can become valued contacts.

Workshop 101 meets daily via Zoom video conferencing

William's Leap for Freedom, hosted by Dion Graham, is an original one hour audio drama based on the life of freed slave William Wells Brown. The Audie-nominated performance was recorded live at the June 2010 NATF workshop in West Plains, Missouri and stars Mirron E. Willis as Wells Brown and features Barbara Rosenblat along with a multi-voice cast.

William's Leap for Freedom is a two part drama; a play within a play. This performance, was adapted for audio from the stage play, William Wells Brown's Leap for Freedom written for the stage by Dr. Cheryl Black of the University of Missouri Department of Theatre.

Dr. Black's play was written and produced in 2008 for the Missouri State Historical society's Missouri History in Performance Theater. In 2009 it was adapted for the National Audio Theartre Festivals by Renee Pringle of NPR, with assistance from mentor Sue Zizza.

Beginning with a fictionalized conversation between William Wells Brown and Mr. Polite, this audio dramatization then introduces part two of the play which features selected portions of The Escape or Leap for Freedom, as it relates to the tale of three slaves, Cato, Glen and Melinda. Brown often stated that this play specifically was autobiographical. The couple, Glen and Melinda, did exist, while Cato is Brown himself.
ABOUT WILLIAM WELLS BROWNWells Brown was born a slave in Lexington, Kentucky in 1814. It is said that his mother was the daughter of Daniel Boone and a black slave, while his father was known to be a member of the Wickliffe family of Kentucky and Louisiana.

Throughout his lifetime, Brown was a fugitive slave, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, an abolitionist, an anti-slavery lecturer, an historian, a medical doctor, and a poet.

Brown is the author of the first novel, the first drama, and the first travelogue published by an African American in the U.S. His particular life experiences gave him a thorough education and with that came an understanding of human nature, and of American culture and society, from 1814 through 1884.

In 1856, Brown decided to stop giving lectures at paid abolitionist engagements and instead began performing his dramas. Through drama he emphasized that all Americans, northern and southern, participated in deceptions necessary to support the system of slavery.

A popular form of drama at the time was the blackface minstrel. Using minstrel comedy in reverse, Brown was able to dispel familiar stereotypes and ridicule the perpetrators of those misrepresentations. In this way, Escape or Leap for Freedom is also a commentary on the minstrel style.

Brown consistently emphasized that blacks should use wit and trickery to fight against and survive their oppression, not heroic confrontation. His dramas emphasize the oppressive circumstances of black and white women; sexual violence against black women; the emasculation of black men; the hypocrisy of the religious community, and the paradox of a system of slavery in America, the so-called land of liberty.

Brown was known as a trickster among scholars. With guile, wit, and charm, he moved his white audiences to face issues without insulting them.

This production, directed by Pringle, with assistance from producer Sue Zizza was post produced by SueMedia Production's David Shinn.

 HEAR Now will once again be presenting  A Celebration of Mark Twain as part of the 2020 Festival.

This year's Festival focuses on Twain's stories that feature female characters from his fiction works like Huckleberry Finn as well as his non-fiction journals and newspaper articles.

Alice Anne English reads from Eve's Diary, Part 2;
Carol Monda (Kraus Performance Mentor) reads from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg;
Sean Pratt (Kraus Performance Mentor) reads from Death of My Wife;
Kraus Performance Scholarship winner Holly Adams reads from The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County; and
Kraus Performance Scholarship winner Leslie Ligon reads from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

 HEAR Now will present a special live video session with legendary actor Ed Asner, whose Emmy-Award winning career included many audio plays, animated series, and a feature animated films.

On Saturday, June 13, 2020, from 1:00pm - 2:00pm (CENTRAL TIME), Asner will answer questions about his work as a voice actor. You can send in your questions to Ed by May 25, 2020, to hearnowsubmissions2020@gmail.com.
Ed will review all questions and pick a group to answer in Zoom video session.

Moderated by narrator Julia Whelan, attendees will get to send follow-up questions via the Zoom chat function during the session. Ed will answer as many questions as possible.

BE SURE TO ADD YOURSELF TO THIS SESSION SO WE CAN SEND YOU A ZOOM LINK TO ATTEND.

Producer's Pitch Panel is for Workshop 101 & 102 Participants
and Podcast Palooza Producers (as space allows)
This is your opportunity to present your work for feedback. Workshop participants are given priority in presenting their programs, with additional producer presentations as time allows.

MC Phil Proctor of the Firesign Theater with special guests Dion Graham, PJ Ochlan, Bill Dufris and many many more presents from the 2019 Festival:

THE MOUSETRAP, adapted and directed by Neil Hellegers, combines the riotous Elizabethan theater environment with an exacting post-modern eSports ethos. Though this be madness, yet there is method in it...GameDramLit in KC!

Mousetrap's cast features Scott Brick, Delaney Cinnamon, William Dufris, Lauren Ezzo, Lisa Flanagan, Robert Fass, Dion Graham, Justin Thomas James, Jennifer Ledford,  Eric Martin, PJ Ochlan, Sean Pratt, and Phil Proctor.

THE ERNIE PYLE EXPERIMENT! SERIES SYNOPSIS
The Ernie Pyle Experiment! was created from the archives of the Ernie Pyle collection at the Lilly Library of Indiana University. It is a thirteen-episode podcast chronicling Ernie Pyle’s pre-war work as a traveling columnist for the Scripps-Howard Newspaper syndicate. Ernie and his wife, Jerry, traveled America from 1935-1942, in quest of interesting stories for his column, and its never-ending deadline. The Ernie Pyle Experiment! explores how it was done. Each episode, through fact and fiction, examines the circumstances surrounding an actual Ernie Pyle column from this pre-WWII era—the body of which is made up from ‘recently discovered’ wire-recordings that give us a view into their everyday lives on the road, and what led to the creation of the column. It culminates in a reading of Pyle’s actual column in question at the end of each installment.

THE ERNIE PYLE EXPERIMENT!   
EPISODE 5 – PERHAPS YOU’VE HEARD OF MY FATHER
Ernie discovers that his father drove his car through the front plate-glass window of the Dana dry-goods store. In a quest to get to the bottom of it, he realizes he must ask the most difficult question of his father, and himself: Who is going to care for his folks in their twilight years?

CAST
Ernie Pyle: Michael Brainard -- Jerry Pyle: Greta Lind -- Bobby Webster: Josh Hogan
Mom (Maria) Pyle: Kate Braun -- Dad (Will) Pyle: Andrew Bowen -- Kent Miller: Roy Sillings
Dan V. Prescott: Tim Grimm -- Cary Onanon: Peter Spellos

CREW
Russell McGee - Sound Director, Script Editor, Co-Executive Producer
Michael Brainard - Writer, Director, Co-Executive Producer
Jessie Brewer - Sound Designer
Ryan Chase - Composer
Brian Barnes - Foley Artist
Nicholas Krohn - Foley Artist
Francis Criscione - Music Assistant
Chancellor Edmaiston - Production Assistant

Jason Fruits - Production Assistant

Come spend time networking with the Festival artists featured throughout the day and into the night.

HEAR Now will host a MAIN ROOM and 3 BREAK OUT ROOMS at our nightly After Parties. Once you are welcomed into the Zoom session our moderator will let you know who else is in the Break Out Rooms so you can choose who you'd like to join.

Door Prize Giveaways nightly from Soundbooth Theater...

Be sure to register for the AFTER PARTY so you get the Zoom video link to attend. Zoom links will be sent an hour before the event.

Bring your favorite morning beverage and come discuss your current projects and what you heard online in Podcast Palooza.

THE NEW SILENCE:  A POEM FOR THE NEW CLIMATE.  By getting personal and little surreal the New Silence by award-winning playwright, Brian Price, uses humor, theater, childhood memories and edgy jazz to take on the thorny questions of climate change.  So often environmental issues are caught between economic wrangling, incomprehensible statistics and “we’re all gonna die” hyperbole.  But what do we really think is going to happen?  Are the ghosts of whales going to haunt us?  Are sirens going to go off and never stop?  Will we still have to mow the lawn?  Acclaimed actor and narrator, Dion Graham (THE WIRE and THE FIRST 48), and critically recognized actress and narrator, Jane Oppenheimer, join master jazz improvisationist, Jason Kao Hwang, on a musical and poetic odyssey through our greatest fears, doubts and fantasies about what’s going to happen next.  A powerful, soulful, unique, loving look at the strange new world to come.  Performed before a live audience at the Hear New Festival in Kansas City, June 8, 2019.  

The HEAR Now Festival's Closing Brunch & Awards bring all participants together for a fun farewell. Workshop 101 will present the final installment in the podcasting series they have been producing over the last 4 days, while guests artists are recognized and Festival Awards are presented.


The 2020 Norman Corwin Award for Excellence In Audio Theatre caps off the festivities.

Be sure to register for the Closing Brunch so you get the Zoom video link to attend. Zoom links will be sent an hour before the event.

HEAR Now will stream this new movie from director Jon Lefkovitz.

It is an exploration of the films and philosophy of legendary editor and sound designer Walter Murch ('The Conversation', 'Apocalypse Now'), as told in his own words.

(Note: This film has been seen and enjoyed by Mr. Murch.)