If on a Winters Night…

Recorded and Mixed Fall 2010. The 2nd Chapter of Italo Calvino’s book, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, brought to audible life.

This was a really fun recording to do. Calvino’s writing style presented a challenge to me in terms of presentation. The writing style is very descriptive, and it made me want to have a lot of narration… initially, I was going to read all of the text of the piece, pausing only for dialogue. As I progressed, I realized that what I was going was too close to an audio book for my liking, which I think goes against the nature of the book. Calvino’s intention was to be vague, providing lots of unneccessary detail, and making you second-guess yourself in some parts. I abandoned as much narration as I could (In retrospect, I could have done even less) and tried to tell the story entirely with sound. The listener, hearing the sounds, does not need to be told that steam engines and espresso machines have a mutual history of steam. They can hear it! Plus, they must focus more on the part of listening, taking them further into the story.

I fully plan to re-do this radio play’s voicework. I have some minor issues with how my presentation is, and I think I could do better. The other thing is that the voices in this should have been much older – these characters are in their mid-30s at least. My actors were mid-20s…and our younger voices just don’t have the same feel. I’m actually already working on re-scripting this, and possibly doing the entire book. I’d like to produce this and put it up on PRX sometime.