Tundra Games on KUSF tonight at 9:30pm (Pacific)

Shoestring Radio Theatre's production of my radio play, Tundra Games, will be on KUSF in San Francisco tonight at 9:30pm (Pacific time). You can listen online at http://kusf.org/index.shtml. Should be another fun (they broadcast my radio play Love & Lightning last week). Let me know if you listen.


Here's synopsis of the show (it runs about 27 minutes):

Hickey is a professional killer cooped up in the middle of an arctic blizzard with his next target, Simon. But the bullets are at home, and they're out of food. Hickey's partner, Rose, shows up just in time, with ammunition and provisions, but Hickey has lost his nerve. Rose takes Simon out to finish the job. She returns and explains that rather than shooting Simon, she pushed him off the back of her snowmobile and left him to freeze. There's just one problem-they have no proof to show their employers that they actually did the job. Rose thinks up a drastic solution, but it's gonna hurt.

Typing Tundra

Late last night I got it into my head that I wanted to submit my radio play Tundra Games for an opp that seemed the perfect match. I looked everywhere, but there was clearly no script on my computer—I lost it and Love and Lightning a few years ago in a hard drive crash, and I’ve needed to enter them ever since.

I finally found a copy in a published book from MRTW (Midwest Radio Theatre Workshop) from 1993 (yes, I've been writing scripts for a very long time). Surprisingly, it was great fun typing up the play. It’s a brutal and funny script—the conflict and back and forth is so clear. There’s no finesse, but it’s really a sharp piece—very crisp. It’s still good to go, after almost 15 years. I just wish there were more places that might be interested, but there’s no market for radio drama. Too bad.

I wonder if sometimes I’m at my best writing for radio—it’s pure ear, and that’s one of my strengths—but I turned away from it long ago, because there was nothing to do with the stuff. The money was worse than theatre, and it had only a small audience, though the stuff I did write has been produced and broadcast a few times. Now, with podcasts, it might all come back. I only ever wrote four radio plays, but I learned it fast, because the for the very first one, I won a grant to produce my play and scripts by three of my friends. I had no idea what I was doing, but I learned the hard way, and producing taught me clearly what works and what doesn't on radio. It was a great example of how the hands on stuff is so important for writers. I found the same thing was true for theatre--self-producing my first full-length play off-off Broadway was more valuable than a handful of classes.

Tundra Games got sent out this morning. Maybe it'll find a new life.

(Summary: Two professional killers lose the evidence of their hit and their improvisation gets ugly. A dark, dark comedy of snowmobiles, severed fingers, and revenge served ice cold.)