More Meridian

Original shadow box artwork by Karen Strachan.

This week we released Meridian 7-1212, the second of two Old Time Radio recreations we recorded for The Sonic Society. Along with the show, we released a bonus scene that's about four minutes long. It adds another short story to the vignette-based piece, further expanding the web of people who call in to the titular phone number.

In the scene, two sailors have overstayed their shore leave. Pete, the younger and more naive of the two, has fallen head over heels for a woman he just met. Joe, more cynical and worldly, is immediately skeptical, having seen his friends taken in by similarly alluring women who turn out to be con artists. The scene ends on a clever and wryly poignant note, bringing us back to Dot Day and the telephone time service while resonating perfectly with the bleak, pessimistic world of the show.

If you listen to the most widely available version of the original broadcast, you won't hear this scene. So where did it come from?

When we re-recorded Meridian, we used a transcribed script made available through the Generic Radio Workshop. It wasn't until after we finished recording that I discovered the original script for Meridian 7-1212 had been published in 1939, along with 13 other scripts from The Columbia Workshop. I started looking around for libraries that might have a copy, and eventually found it in the collection of the Paul Barret Jr. Library at Rhodes College—my alma mater, a regular host to Chatterbox productions, and the domain of Chatterbox Board member Bill Short. In other words, right under our noses.

Reading the original script was interesting for several reasons. It cleared up some of the spelling errors in the transcription, which, among other things, credits the author as Irving Reese rather than Irving Reis. It revealed some character names that are not included in the dialog, like the surnames of the two reporters in the opening scene. It also clued me in to a few words and lines that we flat-out got wrong: e.g., the second drunk is actually named "Stuff," not Scott.

But mainly, it allowed me to find this additional scene, which I knew about from Leonard Maltin's brief description of the show but had never heard nor read. As Eric worked through the show's post-production, we decided it would be great fun to include this scene with our release. Lee, our Dot Day, left town at the end of last summer, so we recorded her calling the appropriate times and added her voice to the great work done later by actors Stephen Garrett and Ross Williams.

Chronologically, the scene takes place between the London scene and the final scene at the courthouse. Now that I've read it, I definitely feel its absence from the larger show. As I said above, it further expands the story's world—and this is a world I want to explore as much as possible. Plus it balances out the heaviness of some of the other stories with a tale that, while not exactly happy, is at least darkly amusing.

So, the mystery remains: Why isn't this scene in the recording that has been passed down to us? Was it cut for time prior to the show's 1939 broadcast, and never actually performed? (That would be strange, as the recording clocks in at a brief 25 minutes, compared to 28 - 29 minutes for other Columbia Workshop shows.) Was it cut out of the recording for some unknown reason during the past 71 years? Or (and I'm just speculating here) is the version we have one that was recorded for rebroadcast to the Armed Forces? This was a pretty common practice, so that those stationed in other parts of the world could still hear their favorite shows, and at a reasonable hour. In that case, I can see the scene being excluded for its depiction of disobedient naval officers. If anyone can shed any light on the subject, I'd be grateful.

On Post-Production

 Alla Bartoshchuk's amazing artwork for Markheim.

This month, Chatterbox will be releasing two diametrically opposite shows. The first, Markheim, is already available for streaming and download from our website. The second, our live performance of The Bremen Town Musicians, will be posted later in the month.

The differences are numerous. One show is dark and serious; one is light and fun. One was recorded in an intimate studio setting; one was recorded live, with audience interaction. And one of them definitely does not feature the song "I'm Just a Honkey-Tonk Donkey."

More to the point of today's post, however, The Bremen Town Musicians will be available within a month of its recording, whereas Markheim was recorded in April of 2010, more than a year ago. Why do some of our shows have extended post-production schedules, while others are turned around almost immediately?

It happens for a lot of reasons. One is the recording technique. Our live shows typically don't get much post-production. Everything has to be carefully set up on the front end, and whatever happens during the performance is generally what ends up on the site. (As a perfectionist, some of the flubs in our live shows drive me crazy. [Especially my own.] But it's also part of those shows' charm.) Because a lot of our live shows are mixed down to stereo as we're recording them -- as opposed to studio shows, where we can keep each performance separated onto its own audio track -- we don't have nearly as many editing options.

Now, to be clear, none of our shows get that much editing in post. We don't assemble our shows, e.g. taking lines from three different takes and cobbling them together. No matter the setting, all of our actors are always in the same room with one another, and the interaction you hear is genuine. Still, studio shows leave much more room for polishing. We'll go back and re-record flubbed lines, for instance, and cut out the flub in post. Not so with a live recording, where again, whatever happens -- happens.

That's one reason some shows take longer than others. Additionally, even after they're finished, shows like Markheim sometimes get held back to make room for shows that need to be posted on a schedule. Our Halloween and Christmas offerings are the most obvious examples. On Halloween night, we present our live performance on WKNO-FM. We like to post the performance to the website within a week or so of Halloween, when people are still in the mood for something scary. We also try to turn our Children's Theatre Festival shows around pretty quickly as well, in order to capitalize on the excitement from those who attended. Shows like Markheim (which is, admittedly, set on Christmas Day) are handy because they can be posted at any time of year.

Finally, we're just darn busy. Our intrepid producers rarely finish recording a show before I'm recruiting them to record another. They also have jobs, lives, and gigs with other theaters. (The nerve!) So, projects sometimes get shelved because there's simply no time to work on them.

Since most of our fans don't know what we've got up our sleeves until it shows up on the site, the people who suffer the most from long post-production times are those involved in the shows. I've repeatedly assured our Markheim cast that there was nothing wrong with the show or their performances; the recording didn't require any major surgery. It just necessarily got put on the back burner as we renovated and opened our studio, presented a couple of live shows, and got caught up in the holidays. In the meantime, everyone got older, and some things changed, like Markheim lead actor Randal Cooper relocating to Nashville.

Part of what makes these recordings so powerful for me is that they're a snapshot of a particular moment in time -- a record of the people we were, and the people we were with. I think the Markheim cast will enjoy re-discovering this show and thinking back to the rehearsal and recording process last year. More poignantly, after the loss of wonderful people like Ralph Hatley and Laurie Cook McIntosh, having all these talents on record seems like an incredible gift.

So there's a little peek behind the curtain at the two shows you'll hear from us this June. Regardless of their differences, I sincerely hope you'll enjoy them both.