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How To
With the hope that such parties will appeal to others interested in theater or radio or drinking, let me outline the steps I took.
1) I found, blocked, cut, and pasted radio scripts at the website of the Generic Radio Workshop:
http://www.genericradio.com/ There are other sites where one can find scripts, such as
http://simplyscripts.com/radio.html
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2) I doctored up the scripts some, so that some actors would hear surprise lines—either forcing them to ad-lib or just to throw them off. After all, the real goal of the Beer & Ear Theater is not to create quality audio theater. It’s to crack up with laughter.
3) I got a bunch of my community theater friends together at my house, where I had set up a very, very amateurish recording studio with crummy microphones and my laptop computer. Refreshments of various kinds were served.
4) I assigned the cast and crew to each script, giving everyone just 15 minutes to prepare before we went “on-the-air.” Given the pressure of time, some of the music and sound effects turned out wonderfully. The acting is another matter.
5) I recorded each performance, then—after just a touch of editing—I burned the audio files to CDs. (I used a recording and editing program that came with my laptop. If you don’t have such a program, you might try Audacity, a free program that’s available at
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ .) All participants received CDs to keep for years of embarrassment.
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