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‘August: Osage County’ production to be broadcast on radio

The L.A. Theatre Works production of “August: Osage County” features a cast including Rondi Reed (left) and Deanna Dunagan (right). Performed at UCLA’s James Bridges Theater, the production will be recorded for radio and digital download.
(Courtesy of Tristram Kenton)

By Noor Gill

July 7, 2014 12:00 a.m.

There will be no sets, no costumes and no 500-seat theater.

However, the latest production of “August: Osage County” in Los Angeles will include two Tony Award winners and five members from the Steppenwolf and Broadway casts and will be recorded to be made accessible to a wider range of audiences than before.

L.A. Theatre Works, a nonprofit radio theater company working toward preserving and increasing the accessibility of theater, will be presenting five performances of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “August: Osage County,” which will run July 10-13 at UCLA’s James Bridges Theater.

The dark comedy, written by Tracy Letts and originally debuted in 2007, tells a story of an extended family reuniting at home in Oklahoma after the disappearance of their patriarch. As tensions heighten when he remains unfound, secrets within the family are unearthed and harsh truths of addiction, adultery and depression reveal the grim reality of these familial bonds.

This production differs from any of the past performances of the play because it will be recorded in front of an audience using microphones and onstage Foley artists, who manufacture sound effects with various tools to recreate what should be heard in a specific scene.

The recording will then be broadcast on public radio stations, including KPFK 90.7 FM and will be made available in thousands of libraries around the country. It will also be downloadable online.

“(The play) is set up as if we were in the radio studio, with the microphones and the live Foley effects,” said Bart DeLorenzo, director of the production. “The audience becomes a part of the experience of (the) making of the (play).”

Actress Rondi Reed, who won a Tony Award for her role as Mattie Fae Aiken in the play’s original cast, will be returning to her part for the radio performance.

“The idea of plays on the radio is a great idea,” Reed said. “People who didn’t get a chance to see the original production on Broadway or when it toured get the opportunity to experience that.”

Actress Deanna Dunagan, who won a Tony Award for best leading actress in a play for her role in the original production, will return to the part of the prescription pill-addicted matriarch, Violet Weston, for this performance.

Dunagan said that because a number of the cast members have experience performing the play, it will provide a good opportunity for audiences who have not seen the stage production to become acquainted with the story.

While the themes, the writing and even some of the actors of the original production of the play will remain the same, DeLorenzo said the newly introduced medium of radio broadcasting does have an effect on how the play will be performed.

With a radio performance comes the use of microphones to record the actors. The microphones give the actors the benefit of not having to always amplify their voices as much as they would in a traditional play performance in a larger theater, DeLorenzo said.

“(Voice acting) is probably what I find the most exciting for me as a director, in terms of exploring just the subtleties within the voice, the shades of meaning that you can evoke with your breath and with your hesitation,” DeLorenzo said. “In the theater … sometimes you cannot be subtle. But in a radio performance with a microphone right next to you, you can.”

While the radio performance does provide an archival recording of the play, it aims to go beyond a studio recorded piece with the added element of a live audience.

“The audience’s reactions provide the punctuation for the play,” DeLorenzo said. “Sometimes with a play that they did some kind of archival recording of, you can so easily see that something is missing, and it has to do with that relationship between the actors and the audience. Together, they make the rhythm and the music of the play.”

Dunagan said that although she is disappointed that the listeners of the recording cannot experience the visual aspects of the performance, they will instead be able to imagine their own versions of the play, which she said may be even better than the original production.

Whether viewed at the James Bridges Theater, listened to on the radio or downloaded on the computer, the goal of the L.A. Theatre Works’ “August: Osage County” seems to be to celebrate the play with as many people as possible.

DeLorenzo said he first listened to the original production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” on a record at his school library, and he remembers how the recording gave him a window into the world of theater.

“12-year-olds in small towns, where they don’t have a theater, hearing about this play and just being able to download it … I think that’s kind of beautiful,” DeLorenzo said.

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Noor Gill
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