So, back when I was first writing Leon in Greater Boston, I gave him a set of idiosyncrasies loosely but consciously based on my wife, Brandy's idiosyncrasies. I was thinking of his quirks as a presentations of anxiety, which Brandy has always struggled with. But then we started releasing the show, and I was surprised when our autistic listeners immediately started claiming Leon as their own. That was fine, and I was glad they found someone in the show whom they related to, but I was a little confused why Brandy's anxiety was reading as autistic coded.
So, um...guess who recently figured out that she's autistic.
Apparently half her friends have figured as much all along, and just assumed she already knew. She only just figured it out because she made a new friend who's autistic and picked Brandy out to be her friend specifically because of her autistic traits.
I feel a little ridiculous not having seen it myself. In hindsight, the signs are everywhere. But I've known her since she was 15, and we didn't have that framework back then. But figuring this out has been really good for addressing some longstanding communication challenges between us.
Anyway, I've always been reluctant to declare Leon canonically autistic because I didn't know anyone autistic intimately enough to feel confident that I could depict autism authentically. But apparently I've had a very close model for him all along.
Anyway, I'm feeling much more comfortable with declaring Leon's autism official canon.
As a last Hansel and Gretel post for now, after the long analysis of the Katsuhiro's manga, I want to share with you a little webcomic I didn't know existed until @svnrise-parabellvm shared it with me.
This is, like Katsuhiro's manga, a dark take on Hansel and Gretel... But not a fun one.
Called "Gingerbread Houses", it was created by Alexander Danner (with art by Edward J. Grug) and posted on five chapters, with the explicit goal of the story being to explore the aftermaths of the original fairytale, with a focus on the kind of psychological trauma such an experience can inflict onto children. Yes, it is not a funny take on the story. And yet.. it does have a dry, dark humor to it.
If you want to check out the comic, the list of its chapters is here:
Cast: Alexander Danner, Jeff Van Dreason, Lydia Anderson, Johanna Bodnyk, James Capobianco, Mario Da Rosa Jr., Kristin Dimercurio, Chad Ellis, James Johnston, Jordan Higgs, Braden Lamb, Mike Linden, Kelly McCabe, Michael Melia, Tanja Milojevic, Sam Musher, James Oliva, Julia Propp, Arun Sannuti, Summer Unsinn, Jessica Washington
Queer Creators: Unknown
Accessibility: Content warnings in episode descriptions, transcripts available here.
Summary: Greater Boston is a bi-monthly full-cast audio drama set in the Boston metro area, blending the real and the unreal, the historical and the fantastical. It all begins with the death of Leon Stamatis, a man so enamored of predictability that the least hint of uncertainty makes life unbearable. But by leaving the world, he has irrevocably changed it.
A speculative fiction podcast about an alternate-reality version of Boston featuring collisions between fact and fiction, comedy and drama, and a subway system that’s been converted into its own city.
Unwell Season Three/Episode Three, written by Jim McDoniel, with sound design by Alexander Danner, and directed by Jeffrey Nils Gardner will be out Wednesday, March 17th.
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Image description: black text on a white field, an excerpt from a script. The text reads “(Barely audible)...I think that if we all work together, there’s no reason why all mysteries can’t be solved.”
We're back with the fourth and final episode of Tales From Albuquerque!
Early on in the process of setting up our Patreon, we had the wild idea of putting together a miniseries that told the story of Doctor Herbert West's time in the distant city of Albuquerque. We would give this corner of the world of Our Fair City to a group of the best writers and designers the Audio Drama community has to offer, and see what bizarre tales they would create. Thanks to your support through Patreon, it is now a reality!
This miniseries, told Rashomon style around a campfire by some of your favorite (or most reviled) characters. We hope you enjoy it, and thank you to all our listeners and especially our supporters on Patreon for making it possible.
Content Warnings for this episode can be found here.
Simon— Mark Soloff
Doctor Herbert West—Ryan Schile
Nathan Rourke— Clayton Faits
Elbows—Abby Doud
Dora— Kat Evans
Nose— Mark Soloff
Toes— Kat Evans
The Bartender—Abby Doud
Andrew Snidge—Frank Sjodin
Written by Sarah Shachat, with Jim McDoniel. Directed by Jeffrey Gardner. Sound Design by Alexander Danner. Music by Stephen Poon. Produced by Jeffrey Gardner. Recording Engineering by DJ Catnip. Created by Clayton Faits.
Hello again, readers! To cap off this fine interview month, I scored big with pulling aside the creators of Greater Boston Alexander Danner and Jeff Van Dreason for some talk and tea.
(The following is a direct copy-and-paste from the email)
Question One: I’ve always liked the semi-documentary style of your show. The way it often starts off with an interview that somewhat reflects the central topic of the episode is a nifty framing device. Is there any reason why you chose to do this?
JVD: For one thing, our show is set in a real place, albeit a skewed, alt universe real place. Since we mention factual events and history, there’s already some bleeding between fact and fiction, past and present. Further, the show is about a community - a geographical area larger than a city. We have a large cast, but our thought process was the more individual voices that we hear from in the show, the larger our community feels, the more similar to a city and its surrounding areas it sounds.
The answers we select from our interviews match the tone of what we’re going for, both for the show as a whole and the individual episodes. Some of them are funny, strange, sad, or a mixture of all of the above. It’s a nice, refreshing way to start, I think - hearing something real and authentic straight from someone’s mouth. It’s not written, it’s not rehearsed, it just is. Finally, it was a good way to make the show more diverse, which was a huge concern for us giving that most of our cast members in Season 1 were white.
It’s a city. Cities are diverse, so it should have a diverse feeling.
Question Two: What is it about Boston that drives you write an audio drama based around it? Are you from that city or do you just personally find it interesting enough to write about?
AD: We’ve both lived in Boston for a long time, but neither of us is originally from here. We’re actually both from different parts of New York. For me, Boston very quickly felt like “home.” I love living in a city that you can reasonably cross from end to end on foot, and pass through such very different places. Boston’s one of the oldest cities in the US, so for good and bad, there’s a lot of history here, and Boston loves wearing its history openly. So it’s easy to find inspiration, both for quirky moments and dramatic.
JVD: Boston is such a weird city! So much of it makes very little sense. There’s this huge sense of working class ethos mixed with higher ed academia, it’s seriously progressive while also being incredibly old fashioned. There’s so much history and it surrounds us everywhere, but then there’s also a ton of development, so you have these old buildings next a bank-sponsored skyrise, the old Trinity Church is dwarfed by the John Hancock tower, but it’s also reflected in its windows.
That’s Boston in a nutshell; this tiny, old little church directly next to and reflected in an imposing glass tower, Boston’s tallest skyscraper. In the Greater Boston universe, much of what’s happened in the past remains in the present somehow; the sticky streets from the molasses flood in the North End, the fact that Wonderland is still an amusement park, the trash fire on Spectacle Island – and those are conscious decisions rooted in the fact that our history still surrounds us everywhere we look, whether we’re aware of it or not.
There’s even some antiquated laws that are technically still on the books in Boston. I remember hearing you can challenge someone to a legal duel on the Boston Common because that law has yet to have been thrown out or redacted.
And part of that weirdness to me is urban alienation. Every time I take the Red Line, I think of how weird it is that all these strangers are crammed together in this underground moving box, and everyone acts like they’re completely alone, ignoring the humanity, the community all around them.
And that’s really a city in a nutshell. We’re all literally in the same situation, we have so much in common, but people sit seats apart from each other. They’re afraid of even their clothing getting too close to another human being. And I get it, because people are afraid of standing out and looking weird, or encouraging weird behavior from strangers. But I feel like the harder we try not to connect with other people? The weirder we all look!
Question Three: Greater Boston is often described to be a sort of slice of life meets magic realism show…with a subway. Was this the genre you were aiming for or do you deem Greater Boston to be something else entirely?
AD: I think that description captures us pretty well. I worry more about the humor/drama balance than about nailing down a specific genre descriptions. That said, magic realism has certainly been a major influence on my my writing for many years, as have contemporary slipstream authors like Kelly Link.
JVD: I appreciate the fact that our genre and tone are difficult to pin down. We wanted to create something complex, something that felt more like a novel in audio form, something that defied classification. It can be a tricky thing to balance, honestly, and we’re both very conscious about making sure some episodes are funny, some are more serious, while all of them sound a little…off, weird, strange, different. That’s the Greater Boston blend we’ve always been going for.
Question Four: Your cast of characters are colorful, to say the least. Is there anyone in particular that’s the most fun to write for?
AD: Well, they’re all fun to write for in different ways, especially because we’ve really tried hard to give them all unique voices. But I don’t think anyone will be surprised to hear that there’s a particular pleasure in writing Mallory. She was only ever meant to appear once, giving her recounting of Leon’s death, back in episode four, but she was just too much fun to write not to revisit her. And now she’s an important part of the full ensemble.
JVD: Mallory is a blast, but she’s also very difficult to write because you constantly have to come up with new and creative ways to swear! I’m not sure I can pick a favorite, honestly, but I love writing scenes with Gemma and Charlotte. They just have such an interesting and complex relationship. I really like Nica too and I use her to express a lot of my personal frustrations and demons. And Leon. Leon’s character is so finite that it’s easy to slip right into that voice.
Question Five: You’ve gotten to collaborate with quite a few people including those behind Ars Paradoxica as well as cameos by Lauren Shippen, Rick Coste, and Ryan Estrada. What was it like getting to work with them and what do you think it’s done for the show?
AD: Oh, it’s so much fun! We’re very lucky to have so many wonderful people who’ve been kind to our show. Getting Beth Eyre in for a recurring part through Season 2 was especially exciting, and she was wonderful! But one of my favorite aspects of this community is how gamely people step into help out on each other’s shows. So many of us have appeared on each other’s shows at this point! (I’m especially proud of my turn on The Infinite Now, in the episode “The Martian Thirst Trap.”)
Of course, that we were allowed to actually *write* a piece of arsParadoxica was a particular honor. They allowed us to write something thoroughly ridiculous for their characters, which was generous and a delight to be a part of. And “Curses” won’t be the last bit we guest write for other shows–but I think we’ll have some announcements to make about that closer to 2018.
Question Six: One of my personal favorite things about Greater Boston has always been the music selection. How exactly did you manage to get a soundtrack that screamed, “This an alternative version of Boston!”
AD: The music began with Dirk and Emily, who are old friends of mine. I actually know Dirk from my days in making comics, and we long talked about collaborating on a project. We *meant* a comic, but Greater Boston became the first project we actually worked on together. He and Emily happened to be talented musicians, playing primarily Irish folk and maritime traditionals, which is perfect for representing Boston.
They then brought in Adrienne, who introduced the hurdy gurdy to our sound, which was a brilliant addition. Jim, who brings in the drums, is someone we both know through our teaching jobs. We kind of pull talent from all over our lives. Dave Lewis, whose original piano music appeared in season 2, is someone I hadn’t spoken to since middle school, but the show brought us back in touch!
BONUS: I’m sure many people want to know what pushes you to keep writing and creating your work. In something as rickety as the podcast scene, you never know what audience you’ll attract and what success may come your way, so what is it that keeps you determined in such a broad and still growing art field?
JVD: A lot of what initially pushed us into the genre of audio drama was our frustration with trying to publish our fiction and produce theatrical work. It’s really difficult to do either of those things and what I love about podcasting is that you can just do something independently.
It takes time, it takes work, it takes hours scheduling and recording and producing, but you’re able to make something complex and beautiful on your own and with the help of your friends. It’s more collaborative and hands-on than writing a story, and there’s more evolution in story than a produced play. And in either case, you have time to build an audience.
Neither of us had dreams of producing the next podcast smash when we made Season 1. We just wanted to get our writing and stories into as many heads as possible. We’re actually blown away with how much Greater Boston has taken off. That’s not to say we’re some kind of runaway podcast smash, but it thrills us so much to know we have an audience. A small audience, but a dedicated one. That’s so huge to us. It’s a tremendous responsibility, in some ways. We don’t want to disappoint people.
We don’t want to let anyone down. But it’s also thrilling and pushes us into wanting to make our show even better, with each new episode and season we write and produce.
We also have to credit how nurturing and supportive the entire audio drama community is. It’s one of the best artistic communities I’ve ever encountered and it feels incredibly exciting to be a part of it, right now especially. I think in many ways, we feel really lucky that the show came out when it did, because we were among a lot of other fantastic audio dramas being released shortly before or after we kicked off. I think we’ve both longed to be in a community like this, where we can pop into each others shows or help record something for each other or even write something for another show.
There’s something so rewarding about that to me. It’s the type of creative situation I’ve looked for my whole life.
AD: And the fact that audio drama is still a growing, developing field only makes being a part of it more exciting. Right now, it’s possible to jump in, and right away have your voice heard, and even feel like you’re influencing the direction the form is heading. The whole experience has been creatively invigorating.
It’s always these creative duos that give me some of the best answers. Hopefully you feel as warm and fuzzy as I do after that interview and are eager to check out Greater Boston for yourself. Thank you all for joining me for tea…now get the fuck off my Red Line.
Julia Morizawa and Richard Penner Join Exercises in Sound
I haven't done a great job of hyping my newest show, Exercises in Sound, lately. Partly that's because it's summer, which means I've been traveling, and visiting family, and spending more time at home on family activities. Partly it's because I've really wanted to focus on hyping The Perfect Sentence, by @vandreasonable, which I truly believe is a tremendous work of personal art that I want all of you to go check out. (And it's only 90 minutes start to finish--shorter than a Marvel movie!) Partly it's because I've been dedicating more and more time to official @greaterblogston projects, including continuing work on scripts for Season 5!
But Exercises in Sound has continued releasing episodes weekly all this time (well...I missed one week), and we have two new additions to the cast! (And these won't be the last new cast members to come!)
In the role of narrators, I'm very excited to welcome Julia Morizawa (of The Bright Sessions! As well as Omi Ogawa on Greater Boston.) and Richard Penner (of The Infinite Now! As well as Thomas Thomas on Greater Boston.). These performances were recorded remotely (the Jordans were recorded together in a local studio), but in a live session with James Oliva directing. These are two actors I always love working with, and it was such a treat to work with them in a live session!
Just as Jordan Higgs and Jordan Stillman both alternately play both roles of Character A and Character B, Julia and Richard are taking turns in the role of Narrator, exploring how their particular approaches to narration impact the tone of the story and the sympathies of the audience.
Additionally, the introduction of narration has added variations to the script itself, exploring how stylistic differences in narration script can alter the story, looking especially at differences in close versus distant narration, removed vs biased narration, and simply the impact of having more or less detailed narration.
Julia and Richard have appeared in three episodes each so far, with more to come! You can find them in:
Narrated A
Narrated B
Perhaps you've noticed that we at ThirdSight Media have started launching new projects alongside @greaterblogston, whether that's @vandreasonable's gorgeous concept album The Perfect Sentence, or my own ongoing formalist exploration Exercises in Sound. We are hard at work on the fifth and final season of Greater Boston itself, but already mulling ideas for new projects to follow.
We used to rely primarily on social media for keeping our listeners updated on everything we get up to, but with the death of Twitter, and a seeming decline of social media in general, we've found getting word out to be increasingly difficult. But if you'd like to keep up to date on what we're doing, so you don't miss a development, there is a solution: We have a newsletter! Just clink that link and you can sign up!
