Save the Date!!!

Casting Callout

Now it was time to market the idea and buy some much needed equipment.  Along with doing an email blast of the flyer to many community websites, the Family Folklore group went door to door plastering the community with the flyers.  A two week contract for advertising on the Miller Marquee helped bring in local voice actors!   

To learn more about making a radio play our Executive Director had lunch with a producer from the SAG-AFTRA Senior Radio Players who explained how to set up, practice and present a radio play. Then On Tuesday July 22nd at 7 p.m. two of our board members took the South Shore train to Chicago to the Chicago Cultural Center and enjoyed a radio play, entitled “Radio as You May Remember It!” 

Inspired and recharged we were ready to start our auditions. Family Folklore held them in late July. Several people came and auditioned. They also consented to being interviewed for our documentary. After filling out permission slips, they were videotaped being interviewed with our freshly purchased light kit brightening the room. 

Butterbird Beginnings

In 2013, we decided we would like to branch out into the fictional realm, but weren’t sure exactly how we would accomplish this. We thought about producing a play, or maybe even hosting a poetry slam session.  Then our founder, Dr. Meg G. DeMakas, wrote a short story entitled, Butterbird Christmas. Our board read it and loved it since it was an homage to Lake County life in the 1950s. 

 

 

It is based loosely on Dr. Demakas’s year as an Indiana transplant in an Ohio neighborhood. Over the course of the short story, the five Grandville siblings suffer a gauntlet of trials and tribulations reminiscent of a Jean Shepherd yarn.  We realized then and there that it would make a great play.
After spit balling that idea around, our communications director suggested that we produce it as a radio play. Her reasoning was two-fold. She comes from a theater and film/TV production background. She pointed out that a radio play would open our casting options and be much easier to budget.

After convening with our board, Dr. DeMakas decided to adapt her story into a radio play. Fashioned in the style that was so popular during the 1930s & 40s, Butterbird Christmas has the elements of good drama…ranging from near tragedy to ultimate joy.  A mix of It’s a Wonderful Life and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, we knew that we must figure out a way to produce this radio play. So, our board held a brainstorming session and decided that we would need to start pursuing grants to make this project a reality.