CofC Theatre Students Produce Audio Drama Podcast

^{Above: Michael Smallwood ’09 (center) with students (l–r) Cheyenne Comitz, Ben Hudd, Jaelin LaVanway and Caroline Drinnon in the Addlestone Library podcast studio (Photos by Catie Cleveland)}

The College of Charleston Department of Theatre and Dance has launched an original podcast, Istoria, as part of its production season. Students involved in the project are working as writers, actors, audio engineers, sound designers and graphic designers, among other roles, to produce an original narrative series based on a new pilot by award-winning writer and CofC adjunct lecturer Michael Smallwood ’09.

Smallwood knew the podcast would be a great platform for his students to collaborate.

“I really liked the idea of doing something that would give the students the full-scale production process, particularly something that would involve our writers, which we don’t always have a chance for,” he says. “Students don’t get a lot of opportunities to experience the whole process from writing to preproduction to editing to submitting.”

When he brought the idea to his students, he was surprised by their enthusiasm.

“It wasn’t that I thought they’d be hesitant,” he says, “it’s just very different from anything we’ve done.”

Several students pitched ideas for the story – including junior theatre-French double-major Madelein Hanson and senior theatre major Jacob Rye, whose ideas were incorporated into the pilot episode Smallwood wrote.

Ultimately they decided to go with what Smallwood describes as a futuristic audio drama. Inspired by the the classic theatrical literary mainstays, Lord of the Flies and La Boheme, the story is set on a spaceship and follows a group of people who have just been taken out of a cryosleep. Still over 100 years from their destination, the characters have to navigate hunger, paranoia and struggle for power as they figure out what really happened and how to survive.

As the showrunner, Smallwood had general ideas about the storyline and the ending, but – aside from offering notes – he gives his students the freedom to figure out how to tell the story.

“It’s a work in progress: The story continues to evolve, and we make changes and edit the dialogue as we go,” says sophomore theatre major Olivia Maness, noting that the 12 student writers have been meeting every weekend for hours to write each of the 10 episodes. “We have a creative group of people who have so many cool ideas that being in the writer’s room is like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.”

Indeed, the story has changed as the characters have developed.

“When they were first introduced, we just had a surface level understanding of them, but we’ve progressed. We have a much deeper understanding of their internal thoughts and their relationships with the other characters that we have so much more to say,” says KB Briggs, a junior majoring in computing in the arts, adding: “I got emotionally attached to my characters.”

The writers worked hard to make sure each character is diverse in age, gender and personality. Smallwood cast the actors, carefully choosing people with distinct voices for the audio medium.

“We come from a background of plays and screenwriting,” adds Hanson, “so visuals are a really big deal and having to switch that mindset and rely on just audio has been challenging.”

Fortunately, the students are up the challenge!

Visit the Istoria podcast page for a full list of writers, editors and actors and to listen to the audio drama. Listeners can also find Istoria on all major podcasting platforms. Episodes will be released weekly throughout the spring season.