One of the unspoken commandments of Earbud Theater is that we should try to do something with every episode that we’ve never done before. I’m cutting together a new piece now, called Bubbles, and while it’s going to be far more brief and quiet than my past work for them, more of a morsel than a meal, I think it has the potential to be a very rich and memorable morsel. The reasons why I’ll wait to explain – for now, we’ve penciled in mid-December for release.
We’ve passed a year now since I first sauntered into the Earbud lair to record Habitat. It took many months to bring that one to life, during which Earbud seemed dormant to the outside world; but ever since it’s been a sustained explosion of work and growth.
Between my episode, called Bubbles and another Casey Wolfe script (This Monstrous Life) that we’ve already recorded which should debut before Christmas (I perform in that one again), we will have produced seven pieces in 2014 – the most productive year in the history of Earbud. I think we’ve raised the bar in quality terms, as well; and with the way the group is growing, I think this is only going to continue on both fronts. We’ll probably save the specifics for an official blog/announcement from Earbud, but 2015 is looking like an even bigger thrill than 2014.
Teaser – A little reminder one of our actors wrote in the margins about how to pronounce a very special word
The audience growth has been remarkable, as well. Listening statistics show that our iTunes debut made us bigger than we had ever been almost immediately; and we’re starting to see little footprints of independent fan activity out there on Twitter and Tumblr. Someone even did a Pinterest thing involving us; and I’m not ashamed to admit I have no idea how the flock Pinterest works, but hooray!
The Castle of Horror podcast recorded a very friendly interview with Casey, in which Habitat gets warmly name-checked. And Escape! (The End of Humanity Song) was broadcast on a British Internet radio programme called Tales From Beyond a Darkened Sky, which features vintage and modern audio dramas, usually in the horror vein.
Finally, the Audio Verse Awards moved from their nominee/contenders phase to their official finalists, and we have eight nominations in six categories (Follow that link and VOTE!) There are a couple of things to be incredibly proud of, there, including our overall nomination as Best Anthology/Variety Production of the Year, and the Best Self-Contained Long-Form Production of the Year nomination for Escape!, competing as an original work against revival productions of classics like Sorry, Wrong Number and War of the Worlds. Maybe the greatest honor is that, of the five finalist for Best Actress in a Self-Contained Production, three of them are Earbud players. I do love writing good roles for actresses, and this is a hell of an acknowledgement that we’re doing something right in that regard.
Earbud has offered a crazily-specific nexus for a lot of my different skills and loves, and I’ve developed adjacent skills as needed along the way. It’s also leading to introductions to a pile of groovy people, and possibly even some paying work (fingers crossed on that.) We recently created a database of all the voice talent that has worked for us along the way, and I was startled to discover that I now have roles in five Earbud pieces (Habitat, Bea Little, The Sounds Below, This Monstrous Life, and a January piece of mine that’s partially-recorded.) This ties me with the fantastic Matthew Henerson (also returning in Casey’s December piece) for most Earbud performing credits. This is really more of a crazy accident, since I only played in Sounds Below because the actor I cast couldn’t make the recording date, and I recorded my role for January just to test out a recording site without needing to haul in another actor. I came to Earbud primarily as a writing outlet, but the fact that it’s seriously fattening my V.O. reel is a very welcome fringe.
I am truly astonished when I look back on what’s happened just in the five months since Habitat debuted. Not least among the astonishments is the fact that I’m already cutting my fourth Earbud piece in this small a window of time – honestly it will be a relief when some of the other writers we’re engaging get their scripts into the studio so it isn’t always this tag team of Casey and myself. Also astonishing is the idea that there’s still a lot of opportunity to make this thing even that much bigger and cooler. At our last recording session, there were probably triple the people in the room of any previous date; looking around and seeing something like that is an unbeatable feeling. It’s very close to that feeling of writing – that where once there was nothing, something is now there.
Kachoolu!