One time as a kid I was sick and my dad left me at home by myself with talk radio playing in the kitchen downstairs. (Hey, it was the 70’s.) I was a touch feverish and I started to imagine that the people talking were actually sitting at my kitchen table. This tickled me immensely.
Last night I had an opposite but even more delightful experience at Sandbox Radio Live’s Episode 4: The Chase! The venue, West of Lenin, was completely sold out— beautiful living butts in every seat. So I had to stand in the back behind the risers, along with fellow writers Scot Auguston and Elizabeth Heffron. I couldn’t see the actors or the Foley artists as they worked their magic, but the performances were so rich, the sound effects so convincing, the music so utterly compelling that I began to float freely in an alternate ocean of radio reality. Because I couldn’t see Richard Ziman playing the Nazi interrogator, he became the Nazi interrogator. When he popped a bottle of bubbly and poured it, it actually happened even though 25 feet away from me a Foley artist was faking it all with a table full of clever sound props. I will admit that at one point I had to move forward to see with my own eyes Charles Leggett blowing his harmonica because I simply refused to believe the outrageous amazement my ears were trying to convince me of.
Sandbox Radio is magic. And the world class artists that generate it are led by a genius, Leslie Law, who in four episodes has managed to accomplish the most difficult task there is in show business: producing consistent excellence, over and over, and getting better each and every time.
I don’t need you to believe me because the proof is in the Podcast coming soon!
(You can go here for podcasts of our first three episodes.)
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