Marcelo Tubert records 90403: Santa Monica-Plucker. Photo courtesy Antaeus Theatre Company
By Steve Simmons – Posted at 11:29 p.m., Monday, Feb. 1
Even during a pandemic it’s possible to explore and learn about distinct parts of Los Angeles, thanks to the Antaeus Theatre Company.
“With the pandemic becoming a long-term thing, we realized we had to find a way to create a full, rich experience that maintains the urgency and intimacy of theater,” says Kitty Swink, co-artistic director of the Glendale-based group, along with Bill Brochtrup.
“We saw everybody was doing Zoom and thought we had to come up with an alternative,” adds Swink. “We’re all podcast and old radio fans, so we thought let’s do audio plays.”
After months of working “outside the box,” the result is The Zip Code Plays, six radio plays ranging from 15 to 30 minutes “exploring vibrant and diverse neighborhoods,” available any time for free at https://antaeus.org/plays-events/zipcode-plays/.
The six plays, each featuring a cast of Antaeus actors, are artistically and geographically diverse and written by a member of the Antaeus Playwrights Lab. They include:
90011: South Central Los Angeles — Speakeasy by Khari Wyatt and directed by Bernadette Speakes. In 1956, Leon (Lloyd Roberson II) comes back to Central Avenue from Paris where he fled to complete his novel. When he tries to convince his wife to return to France with him, he finds times have changed and his wife Bird (Marlow Wyatt) has acquired a gun, a new business partner, Daddy August (Bernard K. Addison), and surprising, secret plans.
90272: Pacific Palisades — Annexing the Palisades by Alex Goldberg and directed by Ann Noble. It’s 1939 at the palatial Murphy Estate and wealthy couple Norman and Winona Stephens (Harry Groener and Nike Doukas) have hired talented craftsman Joseph Kurtz (Adrian LaTourell) to create an elaborate balustrade. When he leans their plans as Nazi sympathizers, the encounter turns to discussions of architecture, racism, opera and more.
90403: Santa Monica – Plucker by Nayna Agrawal and directed by Jonathan Muñoz-Proulx. Renter Mina (Kavi Ramachandran Ladnier) picked a neighbor’s blackberries. Now its Harvesters vs. Pluckers as Mina finds herself on trial before the Santa Monica Flora and Fauna Association (Veralyn Jones and Marcelo Tubert).
90024: Westwood — ALL INFORMATION HEREIN IS CLASSIFIED by Deb Hiett and directed by Carolyn Ratteray. A collection of top-secret FBI recordings recounts the investigation of 80-year-old Eleanor Pender MacAdams (Dawn Didawick) who’s decided she can’t keep quiet anymore and joins protests at the Federal Building. Recorded phone calls with her daughter, and interviews with two FBI agents who want to know who she knows and what group she’s involved with, unspool the tale.
91352: Sun Valley — Salvage by Steve Serpas, directed by Julia Fletcher. In an auto junkyard, former voice teacher Martha (Gigi Bermingham), now nearly blind with retinitis pigmentosa, awaits a volunteer to help her locate a part for her 1998 Subaru Impreza WRX, before her license expires. When Billy (Jon Chaffin) arrives, it turns out they had teacher-student relationship.at the Center for the Blind. “Two blind folks out to fix a car,” turns into an afternoon of music and reconnecting.
90012: DTLA — Clara and Serra and The Talking Bear by Angela J. Davis, directed by Steven Robman. A magical encounter with a celestial comet brings downtown bronze statues, pioneering public defender Clara Shortridge Foltz (Abigail Marks), Father Junipero Serra (Tony Amendola), plus a massive ice age short-faced bear from the La Brea Tar Pits, Arctodus (Luis Kelly-Duarte) to life. After expressing amazement about coming back to life, the discussion turns to historical accusations, redemption and social justice.
Finding The Stories
“Bill remembered that the first time we had a Playwrights Lab reading they did 10-minute plays,” recalls Swink.
So, for this new endeavor, Swink and Brochtrup met with the playwrights and brought up the idea of creating new plays inspired by L.A. Zip Codes. The only direction was that the piece be a radio play, under 30 minutes. “We really wanted to see their vision,” says Swink.
This “smart and wonderful group,” that meets weekly, “produced so many good ones, it was hard to pick,” Swink says.
“What I love about this first group is the range of genres and styles,” says Swink. There’s magical realism in the Downtown story described as “a fantasia of repentance, acceptance and grace,” and plays based on actual events like the planned Nazi compound Pacific Palisades and plucker court in Santa Monica.
Once the plays were selected, directors and writers met on Zoom calls and made offers to actors they wanted—there were no auditions. “They are all familiar with the resources of the company,” add Swink. Director Ann Noble choose Nike Doukas for the urbane matriarch in Goldberg’s play. “She brought the 1930’s sound, attitude and style the piece needed,” says Swink.
The plays have drawn more than 30,000 listeners from five continents. “We’ve obviously been able to reach a larger audience,” says Swink. “The plays break down barriers for people who might not consider themselves theatre-goers because of cost or distance, but they can listen to a radio play.”
Each story also opens with the acknowledgement that the stories are taking part on lands occupied the Tongva Indigenous people.” Recognizing the social unrest going on around us and working on diversity and inclusion, we felt we needed to honor and talk about the people who were here before us,” says Swink.
Adrian LaTourelle records
90272: Annexing the Palisades
Photo courtesy
Antaeus Theatre Company
Putting It Together
When they decided they were going to do radio plays, Swink and Brochtrup turned to Jeff Gardner, a company actor for 14 years, with a music and sound background, who has sound designed numerous productions at Antaeus including Wedding Band and is the resident foley artist at L.A. Theatre Works series of staged readings, creating sounds ranging from the swishing of clothing, breaking glass, footsteps, squeaking doors and whatever the script requires.
“They contacted me at the beginning to make sure the idea was viable,” says Gardner, “to see if this was something we could design, record and produce. As someone with a passion for radio drama, I immediately said ‘yes.’”
Knowing actors would need to set up temporary studios in their homes, following SAG and AFTRA safety guidelines, Gardner created kits that could be delivered to actors’ homes consisting of a RODE NT-USB microphone, an isolation shield and stand to record in, a pair of headphones, an iPad tripod for their digital script (so there’s no page-turning sounds), an ethernet cable and all the appropriate adapters.
“We knew there would be some non-tech savvy company members wary of setting up equipment,” says Gardner, so he developed how-to videos to walk them through the process, and Swink and Brochtrup volunteered to be Guinea pigs. “If we could do it, anyone could do it. “
The kits were labeled, and an intern delivered three kits per story to actors’ front doors. The actors brought them in, sterilized them and set them up. After four to six hours of rehearsal and recording, the kits, 15 in all, were picked up, sanitized again, and delivered to a new set of actors two days later.
“People learned pretty quickly and got up to speed,” says Gardner. He had to send out additional isolation blankets for some actors to have behind and below them, and recommended recording in a closet for some performers.
After the recordings were complete, the directors and Gardner sent notes to sound editor Adam Macias on takes and pick-ups they wanted. Macias cut the recordings, added the ambient sounds, edited out all the line flubs, mistakes, pops and clicks and created a final result that makes it hard to believe the cast members were not recording together in the same room.
Gardner takes the same approach to sound design that he does to acting. “I want to evoke something emotional in the viewer or listener. I never thought of it as a viable career,” says Gardner. “But 10 years ago, I was asked to help as audio producer, and I started to design shows. Now I’m basically the resident sound designer for Antaeus.”
For the Zip Code Plays, among other sounds, he created a taxi, a realistic fight scene and a cat, using paper clips taped to a garden glove and scratched on wood.
He also worked with composer Ellen Mandel, who created the series’ theme. “We came up with the notion of tweaking the theme to fit each individual play. So, the Pacific Palisades entry, which has a German theme, “is like we’re taking a stroll through Germany,” with appropriate instrumentation. “She gets a lot of credit for creating the mood going into each story.”
Always an actor first, he “would have loved” to take part in one of the plays, but facilitating the recording, helped him “work to preserve the art of radio drama” he fell in love with as a student at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. Taking a class on the art form, and especially liking The Shadow serial, “I learned to totally see the power.”
A Complete Package
To go along with each play, “and create a richer experience,” the company has created virtual tours of highlights of the respective Zip Codes, narrated by company members. “We initially encouraged people to visit personally, and now, after the stay-at-home orders, listeners can virtually visit L.A. and that’s wonderful,” says Swink.
Executive Assistant Jade Moujaes “did a lot of Googling” and visited the Zip Codes to find the historic sites highlighted on the tours along with small businesses and restaurants they’ve partnered with. The Westwood Tour includes the Wilshire Federal Building and stationary store Flax Pen To Paper, while Downtown has Union Station and Demitasse, where each barista has a signature drink.
Be Our Guest
Two-time Audiofile Award-winner and company member Ramón de Ocampo, involved in the process early on, loves the idea of being host, setting the mood and whetting listeners’ appetites.
An audio book narrator for more than 20 years, de Ocampo, had the experience, plus a professional audio booth, that made him the right fit for the job.
Sent the framework for each play’s intro and closing, de Ocampo realized, “It can’t just be ‘hi’ and ‘we did these things.’ Since there are many people who may never have heard of Antaeus and what we do, I wanted to find a way to talk about our programs and even the name.” (Antaeus was the son of Poseidon and Gaia, mother earth.)
“My thought was, ‘the curtain has gone up and what would people want to hear in their car, computer, phone or laptop. I felt a big responsibility to make listeners feel they were being taken care of and they could trust me,” de Ocampo says. “And it had to be something that doesn’t take too long.”
A big fan of radio and podcasts, de Ocampo worked on his parts “to make them sound like me. There are tons of podcasts out there and I want to get this right and make these plays as relevant as those.”
While he would have liked to take part in one of the plays–“this is my home company I’ve grown up with for 15 years” –and even left props and his script for Measure for Measure in the dressing room when theaters closed, hosting gave de Ocampo the chance to use his writing and reporting skills and his personality.
De Campo also narrates a teaser for the audio tours, led virtually by other company members.
Enjoying a career as the voice of audio books, de Ocampo says, “it’s not that I have a special voice. You have to be able to act a story and live all parts of one narrative; do all the camera angles. There are voices that are better than mine, but I’m good at storytelling.”
Moving On
The second set of stories is now in the works, with Playwrights Lab drafts being worked on. Featured will be Monterey Park (91754), West Hollywood (90069), Inglewood (90303), North Hollywood (90601), Echo Park (90026) and Pacoima (91331).
“With this project,” says Swink, “our writers, actors and directors want to make sure we didn’t get lost in the crowd of what everyone else was doing. We had three goals: Artistic excellence, giving our artists a chance to reach audiences who know us and expand that reach, and celebrate where we live. As a classical theater company many of our plays are set in London townhomes, Italian piazzas, Russian estates, or the American South in the 1950s. These stories are set in our community. So, it turned out to be a magical confluence of all the things we aspire to do in one idea. And we pulled it off well.”
For more information, visit www.antaeus.org.
