 So, as we're transitioning into the final panel, we're going to take a look at sort of the way Susie had prefaced it, a new avenue in which you can explore playwriting. Today we have Seth Hoderman moderating the panel, and we have three people representing two different groups of radio playwriting, and Seth, if you're the one who's going to play. Yeah, sure. Hi, everybody. I'm Seth Hoderman. I'm the fan of online media at the Dromadist Guild. Next to me is Claudia Catania, who is the host and producer of Playing on Air, which I just have to tell you, I'm a huge fan, and I recently got into it and I put them up there on my iPod, and I was putting them on the way to work. So, I'm a huge fan. And then we have Sheila Cowley, who is the, hold on, hold on, Operations Manager and Writer and Operations Manager at WMNF in Tampa. Oh, you're good. I'm going to memorize the WMNF. And then Matt Cowley, who's a writer and sound designer at the Radio Theater Project and at Studio at 620. Okay, I was trying to open my notes. Okay. Can I open up with just a general, what drew you into wanting to produce Radio Place? I work in radio station. About 16 years ago, I started a radio theater career. So, I was a writer and didn't really have experience writing, so I really wanted to try that. So, kind of, we went to the Library of the Theatre workshop, which is kind of a national audio theater festival, so I learned about that. Could you be a little bit of a logistics of it? And I would just, I think I would just start by saying, you know, nobody's talking about slamming doors and never making a molly or anything, you know, this is all new work, it's modern, it's not recreations of nostalgic stuff, but it's all new and, you know, it's relevant. It's not linear. It's just another mechanism. It's another outlet for new playwrights. I think the Genesis for me was a little different. And I think there's room for a huge amount of writing and playwriting to go on to radio stations and podcasts and streaming and whatnot. But my niche, what I do and what compelled me to do this was it bothered me that we live in a big nation and the vast majority of us do not know a thing about theater, you know, maybe they've been to their nephews' high school performance or an occasional outing. But for the most part, I've done unscientific research and I've asked people if they can name a living playwright and maybe they'll come up with an Audi or Kirchner, but maybe not. So this is appalling because we have a treasure, you know, a treasure of playwrights and a nation that really doesn't understand very much about theater. So one day I was sitting at a reading in New York, you know, one of a multitude of readings and once again a bunch of actors and playwrights, you know, blew my socks off and I thought, why is it just eight of us unfolding chairs listening to this person blow our socks off? Why not the nation? Same amount of time, why not? So I decided there's a big waste, I don't like waste, I'm a version of waste and there's all that talent in New York. So I also thought if we could somehow, you know, create a platform that's essentially a stage as large as their ways can go and as ubiquitous as the internet, maybe more Americans would start to understand what theater's about and as a result become, you know, patrons. You know, in terms of audience development this might be a long-term way to gain support for theater as a whole. So it seemed the way to get into most people's lives was either through radio or the internet and the way to do it at least in my estimation was through the short-play genre because people are on the go and they're used to consuming those particular old and new forms of technology in short skirts, which is perfect for the short-play, whether it's, you know, six minutes or 26 minutes, it's still the amount of time they're used to consuming theater, music, discussions, whatever, on technology. And it's a genre that I think is magnificent and has tremendous potential but is unexploited. So it seemed like a perfect, a perfect thing. And given there's no money, there's no way you could really compete for anything but something languishing in somebody's hard drive or drawer. And that's how it happened. So I just decided to do it. And the first person I called was Chris Durang and he was really nice and he said yes. And then Alex and Rickerson said yes. And Jack and Michael said yes. And it was enough yeses to put together a demo to take to a radio station and that's how the poll got rolled. So it's two different approaches. So it's very different. You're doing studio work that you're distributing. We're doing, we've done a lot of studio work and stuff that we've distributed at other stations but we've been focusing on the ones that are just like performances. Could you both kind of talk about your process of producing? Because it is a little different. Can you talk about what goes in behind the scenes and how you put this all together? Sure. So what we do for the past five years, part of this project is called the Radio Theatre Project and it started out as a collaboration between an art space in St. Petersburg, the studio at 620. Which is a great little incubator art space for all kinds of things and they said the answer is always yes. So there's theater and music and dance and anything else and our radio station WMNF which is a community listener supported kind of station. And there's kind of a group of people there. We live in St. Pete so there's a lot of retirees and some of them in the community there are kind of have had long story theater careers for instance but are not acting actively anymore. So this was a way for them to kind of create opportunities for themselves. So what we do is once a month, for about six months out of the year we do a live show and it's usually three plays, two to three to four plays acting in front of the mics and then there's a table of sound effects and things. And we have about a day's rehearsal. They do a read through and then we do a tech rehearsal in front of the mic with sound effects and then just put it up the next day. So it's a very short commitment for the actors. I do a little bit of kind of pre-production sound effects stuff that weekend or whatever the weeks before. It's a Monday night so a lot of the actors are in current shows but theaters are dark on Monday so we get really good actors who are free on that night. So we record those shows and then broadcast them later on the radio station. The audience is built slow but now it's kind of standing room only. It was helped a couple years ago when we got a grant from the Florida Humanities Council to always include a Florida writer and because of the grant it had to be free so a lot of people started coming but the last year we hadn't had the grant and it's just been like a donation at the door and it's done really, really well and it's gotten even more popular. And I would just say you don't have to have a radio station. We have a radio station with a bunch of microphones on as you guys do. The kind of thing, if you don't have a radio station you can still put work up with actors reading scripts on mic for an audience with sound effects. You can record it if you want or not. I mean there's a group in New York that sell out multiple key things of shows of the same show, multiple performances and they don't even try to record it. They're doing it just for the house audience and things change for us because we first, we're doing it to focus on the recording and then we realize more people are in this theater than are probably listening to this show on the radio. The whole issue is just the house sound and we're kind of, I know you have kind of selling sound effects but we kind of ramped up the sound effects and made it a little more prominent. And I used manual sound effects, more than recorded. Right, we started doing the radio theater in the studio so I did all the sound effects on the computer later kind of post-production sound kind of process thing but we discovered that people just love watching me open and close doors and walk on things. That's crazy. So as much of that stuff as I can do manually, that's just part of the show now. I'm so glad that you threw that in because I don't want to assume that everyone knows what a sound designer does but I mean if you can elaborate a little bit of your process and then we'll go into what playing on there is in health insurance but I don't want to assume that everyone knows what it is. So the short answer is it's anything but the voices on a radio play. You know, on a film it's a whole different thing working with other stuff but for us it's just anything but the voices but the kind of slightly longer answer is that the cool thing about radio for me is like I think Steve said yesterday that in a film that you have, you know, pull in 1945 it has to look like pull in 1945 but on stage you can put a sign and people will bite into it. On the radio you can say it's pulled in 1945 and have a little bit of wind or you can say this isn't a submarine grade and have a little ping sound and in the listener's mind they will see the complete set. You know, they'll see Das Boot in front of them even though you haven't built it. So what I do kind of as a sound designer and fully guide thing is kind of just push them in that direction. I give them just enough sounds other than the voices to say okay this is really where this is and crowns it a little bit so if they're in a diner I might clink some glasses so it just makes it feel a little bit more realistic if there's a fight. You know, I have a little leather jacket filled with pillows that I can fight with. Or if it's, you know, something that I can't do manually there might be a battle sound and that's compete on the computer and it's just anything that pushes the audience to be their own cinematographer. That's what I would just say as a corollary to that. I know one thing that Steve Yackey said that he's here I can never write for radio because my stuff is so visual but I think, oh, that's the huge freeing thing of radio because you can do stuff on the radio and create these visuals that you could never do on stage and that, you know, maybe you'll never get a chance to do on a television but you can really do it easily on the radio. I would just mention the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe. Which was this huge, beautiful world on the radio and in a TV and film it was written originally for radio that's what it was created for and something like that you can do like one of your famous first ones was Caramel in my Pocket. Do that on stage, you know, you can do it on the radio. It's a lot of fun and I can attest to the entertainment value of that sound because I was at a table with him and he was doing the sound effects for this play. It was great. And also, when Michael was talking earlier today about animals and this and the other, and it is true, you know, we did a war and light piece called The Final Interrogation of Francesca Chau's Dog, the Romanian dictator's dog and it as no played the dog and it was, I think for the listener, a lot more fun than because they could have their imagination and that happens in a lot of the plays. Someone mentioned Jackie Reingold earlier too and she has a wonderful fervent and whimsical, delightful sensibility. So she can write a play about a 12-foot guy sitting on an airplane next to a 2-inch lady and on the radio, no problem. Is there something that really attracts you to a script that you're like, this will fit really well or this will not fit very well? I suppose. I mean, since this is more about theater on the radio than radio plays per se, I look for a well-made play. That would be the first thing that would attract me. And I guess the last thing that would attract me too, I mean, it's basically that. It's just a good play. There are certain things that I know won't work even if I adore the play. It is highly physical and highly, highly visual or it has an FCC infraction every second word. You know, that could be problematic. But little adjustments. I mean, I've actually been quite amazed myself how little has to be done to a stage play to make it work on radio and quite wonderfully. You know, yes, if there's, you know, five fuckings and two shits, that's generally not a big deal and every playwright has a different way of, you know, dealing with it, but to a person, they've all said, oh, no, no problem, no problem. And they either cut it or they come up with something funnier or they just, you know, all right, I can't say fuck, I'll say screw, I can't say shit, I'll say crap. You know, whatever they decide to do, it's usually quite inventive and easy and fast. Sometimes, you know, there's a missing visual and playwright is, you know, just, okay. You have a gun, you know, and you're done. It's all settled. Almost always the playwright is on site. So, very often, last minute, you know, they'll say, oh, no, no, no. And they'll just rewrite a little something in it. It's wonderful to watch them work because they just make a slight adjustment and it just kind of reshapes the whole moment. So, we've been fortunate. Is there something that, as writers, is there something that you have in your head that is, this is what we have to do? I notice on your website that you accept submissions. I guess you accept submissions, too. We both do. But I notice that you have, like, a list of, like, keep this in mind, playwrights. And that's a good point because we've had a different experience with adapting stage plays and some spectacular and infamous failures that live in people's horrifying embrace of stage plays that people didn't want to change. A lot of stage plays that people didn't want to change anything is where we run into trouble because a lot of stage plays work fine on the radio. It's all about dialogue. And where we've had problems, it was produced already, you know. It's fun just like it is, you know. You can change your thing. And what we found is that it's a whole different medium. Yeah, and that's a really, that's an approach that we differ a little bit from people of quality where she's putting a stage play on the air. And our, what we try to do is make radio plays. So that's a different medium. And so, when I'm writing for that, what I try to do is take advantage of things that are specific to that medium. So things that you can only do with sound or things that are enhanced by the use of sound or things that have not worked have been things that are visual, obviously, or kind of, you're asking a lot for people to kind of sit and listen for a long time. So length is an issue and there has to be something really compelling. So just like any other stage play story is key. And it has to be, there has to be enough action, even if it's two guys talking in a bar to use the sequence analogy. There has to be something to keep the action going to keep them listening. So things that I've tried to do are just anything that's, there's an example I think of visually, like in the silent movies, there's scenes in like Charlie Chaplin where he's walking down a train track and there's a train behind him and he doesn't hear it because it's a silent movie and so he just keeps walking where there's a crowd behind him with signs and things and he doesn't notice because it's silent. And you can do that kind of thing on the radio kind of in the interest. You can, I'm trying to blink as people are staring at me, but things that you don't see, you can take advantage of the fact that you can't see it and kind of reveal it later or things like that. Things that only work because people can't actually see what's going on. You know, it's a beautiful use of radio. So I've written little sort of things that are on walkie-talkies or people talking to the phone or anything that's just kind of a way that might not work on stage very well but works because it's a sound thing. I think you asked about the mechanics and some of the simple mechanics are people have to talk or they disappear. You can't have people standing around in the background of a radio scene so the fewer people that are on the scene, the easier it is on the listeners. Two or three, four people. Once you get beyond that, it starts becoming a little chaotic for people on the scene. There's not as much of this if you're focusing on people watching. But on the radio, if it's truly on the radio, there's only so many people you can tell work really at the same time, which is the old kind of classic. There's on the radio, there's an Irish guy and a Jewish guy, the German guy. So you can tell they're at the same time. So you can do more at the same time. We love that sense. Casting actors from their tone of voice, you can't help people that sound identical. Or it's like you've got the same person when you get twins on stage. YouTube? I'm sorry. No, no, no, just to say that I find YouTube's very helpful because you can't quite remember an actor's register. It can refreshes your memory but I've made mistakes nonetheless. One of the things that's really strange is that it's really strange because it doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter what you look like. You never get cast in that part eventually, maybe. It doesn't matter because it all is what you sound like. And so you can have you just have these plain beautiful women. It's how they sound. It doesn't matter how tall you are. So actors really love it. Do you have questions? I'm curious in your situation if you mic your audience so that they become a part of that process. Yeah, and I think Sheila talked with Nan Barnett who had a brilliant idea. They did some live stuff where they had the audience do some of the Foley effects. You can look at two cards. Which I think is great, but we do have a house mic sitting up to catch the reactions and things because if you're listening to the live, to the broadcast later of the live show you'll find the live a little bit later. Clearly we're the steel man. Although one quick horror story that we saw a science fiction, the science sci-fi channel used to do radio plays for a while on their website and they did a live show of dial-in for murder and another play. And at the end of the other play I think it was, they were in this field and this tension was just building and building was really scary and finally at the end, did end with the other guy with a shovel to the head basically, right? So there's this big scene building up and building up and the Foley guy doing everything live has a big watermelon and the shovel to the head is, boom, I'm smashing a watermelon. So, if you're listening on the radio that's a really scary moment until the crowd in the theater sees basically Gallagher, right? The crowd interrupts and laughter. Oh, that's terrible. That's terrible. That's terrible. Yeah. If any of you are in New York we also started to do it occasionally in front of live audiences and I don't know, I don't think we have time but I did bring a sample if we do have time. Oh, good. No, for sure. And I would say if you're doing it yourself you know, actors are fantastic to work with them. There's basics of like stuff and we have an incredibly interesting handout that we neglected to print out that we can email people. It has a lot of resources for people that are doing it live now like I wrote over there and we just met who's getting paid to write radio drama and you've got like 70,000 subscribers to your podcast. That's a really good podcast I have to say. It's cool. Cool. If you divide that by 10,000 that's how many we have. I think it's a there's a tremendous potential for the sort of work that we're doing and I think more and more people will do it because for a long time you know, the days, the glory days of radio were over and they were just vanquished by television and film but now everyone is constantly plugged in so there's a huge need to content. So I do think there's potential there. Oh, I have a question. Sure. Do you guys have to work with after or I work with SAG After yet. SAG After and what about you guys? We don't because we basically have no budget and I'm not an expert on this stuff but we have a couple of SAG After people in there and equity people we've never had a problem our audience is small enough and the pay is low enough it's basically gas money so maybe that's what the cutoff is. I don't know. And they're reading too so many times if you're holding the script they only have to pay for transportation. Yeah, I should tell that to SAG After. Yeah. Equity. Equity. Exactly the time for question to ask getting more toward whether you have any written agreements or licensing with the actors or with the playwrights to do this considering that I'm assuming it's recorded for maybe future rebroadcast what do you do about licensing your rights? Everybody. In terms of the actors it's negotiated by the union and it's favorite nation but everybody gets the same and the whatever back end is the same and what's paid into health and retirement it's just otherwise I think I would commit harry carry so that's done and then it's just a question of whether the actor wants to do it for the writers again it's essentially a favorite nation again I'm a one man and here and pretty much it is what it is there's a flat fee there's a sharing and revenue we should be so lucky to think of other forms of revenue other than radio broadcast I thought going into this that there would be income of some support from what are called carrying charges but when you're an independent radio producer and you're starting and the program director chairman of the oh yeah we'll air you but we won't pay you anything it's you have to wait do I want another 400,000 people or do I want 26 dollars so what are you going to do once you're successful it's a whole other thing and you have that revenue for us what we do in the studio is typically stuff that we write or friends of ours write and our actors are friends of ours and for the live shows we do take submissions and right yeah there's an agreement with the writer and part of that agreement it's just understanding that it's going to be podcast and broadcast live and they get a small stipend some people that float from California to come to the show but the nice thing is that you know we're recording it for broadcasting so you actually get a permanent record of your play and a link on the website to the podcast that you can share with all your family and friends this is my play and this is what it sounds like for our actors it's mainly a core ensemble but it's all we're not blessed to live in New York for the most part our names are smaller not to comment on their talent which is great but their names are not they're mostly from our name so the contractual stuff is smaller and we're also under the umbrella of a couple of non-profit groups both of you I think mentioned about length of piece what's the average length of a piece you said short play the average is between 10 and 20 minutes kind of 20 that doesn't mean there are any sections for us we found for the live shows we've done some that are like an hour and a half and those are really hard to keep an audience in place for an ideal length for us is like two half hour plays and then a 10 minute play or something like that within an intermission we've done it kind of depends on what your target is there's a lot of people producing podcasts now which is great and so that can be really variable you can kind of just what the story demands if you're aiming for radio broadcast there are specific time links like you're shooting for 53 minutes to answer your I have to come in in a hard 53 minutes so that means if I'm going to have two interviews in two plays or three interviews in three plays you have to restart the program not only do you want it to be dramatically some sort of dramatic contextual sense but it also has to fit together in terms of minutes and then on top of that there's an episode intro and an episode credits and then there's a play intro and credits for each of the two or three little plays and then there's an interview after each of the two little two three little plays and then there's music composed of the two three little plays and then sounds like what has worked also well for us has been playwrights who have taken full length plays and adapted them for radio into basically two half hour episodes that run 100 version in between and some of the really great ones that they've done have been, we did Marcus Gardner just this last year as part of the rolling national career with the large program which the well run has done the last two years adaptations that we've convinced them and worked because of the whole full length stage but it's just too much for a radio audience but you can kind of get the essence of it I've also done a lot of really short plays on the radio like one to five minutes I had to for a while I was doing one of those a week for like two years which is a great way for me and it's a great way to try out ideas and since it's radio you can kind of do everything yourself so it's a great way of making an opportunity for yourself I would just say if you're doing it yourself and you're working with actors and actors are fantastic, if they're stage actors you may have to tone them down a little bit so they don't just blow you another next week because it's kind of like it's very intimate but you know what we found is people that will act with their whole bodies even though they're on microphone your body affects your voice and if somebody just stands there and talks to them like they've never moved it really affects their voice and they don't sound as alive as if really good voice actors can move and still not be off-mine and that's just something that you know is because you're working with people that keep in mind it's okay to move it's okay to shrink your voice and it's okay and it's okay to vocalize too step out whatever because you can't as you said you can't have those clauses or people think they've lost power so some kind of vocalization or sound effect to fill it in if you must have it but basically Claire it's been very good about letting it go and you know if there's time to shift gears there's a lot that can be done of course production even when it's recorded live if there are any other questions we're going to see a little bit about a little bit from each of these what they do do you want to start with maybe then there'll be some questions we're going to do the video for yep we're pulling it up right now where is this video from in March we did two evenings of three short plays each at a fantastic new facility in downtown Brooklyn called Brick Brick Arts House it's just adjacent to Bam Harvey and they have an amazing black box with bleachers that come out a little U shaped balcony so they really have received we had 230 people in there but they were terrific we had a lot of fun so it's a long story why we did this is because we are on nobody's radar and a playwright said to me David Ives Claudia you're never going to raise any money if you don't raise your profile so he said call meeting and I did I called meeting six playwrights showed up and they all concluded so I said that's going to cost a lot of money and everybody just acted like they didn't hear and I just you know put it together but they were right because it has helped and I think we need to do it more so this is one of those two nights and then from the first night I was able to cobble two of them together to make a show second night hopefully too and then I still have some extras because you always have hanging inventory sometimes it's there for these wonderful pieces could be stranded and orphaned for a year or two before you find an opportunity where they fit in thematically and in terms of the minutes are we good making sure this is loud enough for you all to hear it given the music any questions just in terms of funding I think when we had a conversation at one point you guys have been able to get some funding from the state of Florida Department of Humanities that was great right that was great that was done through the Studio 620 that art space and that was for two years and it was to fund plays either about Florida basically or by Floridians preferably both and one thing that we found really works for us is locality so even after the grant has ended we have this kind of running series where there's a continuing story each time that's really really hyperlocal it's based in that town and there's a co-writer with a former newspaper writer and it's it's popular because people like to hear their town mentioned in the radio show Hi question have you experimented at all with times of day that you program your show and what is or isn't more or less successful? we have no control yeah it's like you were like you know no I mean the program was like the program controls that that channel for a couple of years so most people are either listening to the podcaster or they're at the event most people are not listening to the actual live broadcast that's a good question the show used to be on the main broadcast channel on a Wednesday night or something and now it's basically a podcaster we haven't really pursued promotion as aggressive is we should which means basically at all but it's it's difficult to it's listenership I guess focus is really good with live shows a lot of shows are what get local pros can I ask so neither of these programs have been put out as paid podcasts this has all been a podcast for offered free online yes except I'm glad you brought this up because I'm you know not in my brains out trying to figure out how to bring in a trickle of revenue and the concept is to deliver a theater to everybody for free and on demand so that will remain in there right over free streaming for free podcast a few at a time for free but it did occur to me that if we had a store where people could access shows that weren't available at that moment for free let's say there's five shows up for free or for some reason they wanted to download it I was thinking we should probably do that and I wanted to sort of ask what you thought you would be a reasonable price to pay because I'd like it to be inexpensive but also going through the exact same thing because I'm working on an audio project and it's trying to figure out how to price it for podcasts and also you know obviously there's nothing that would be at the store couldn't be somehow done for free but some people you know just convenience and it's worth paying something our podcast the drama skill are all free I'm from the school that you don't pay for podcasts money shouldn't come from listeners should come from sponsors I just came across a lot of research about the pricing of how you want to do that and how you want to sell it but there's even a few sites and I can't cite any of them but you can put your podcasts into it and you don't even have to edit they'll do all the editing and they'll cut into sponsors that they think are more suited for your program this is all via Google are we ready for the video? Matt are we good? no she can always get it because it is not all on the podcast alright well here is playing my hair pause that for a second my sexy boombox nice this is a this is a a tablecloth are we good now? we should be is Connie up there? yeah Cliff she's here take my name man yeah only not too good oh she said attractive one day I was out in the patio thinking about how I'm almost 26 and I'm out of work and then I look up and I see these little underwears a woman rather I noticed facts looking at me the second day he moved in I knew his uncle next door a long time you ever notice on girls I mean women's underwear how they got those little ribbons in the shape of a bow that's cute genius my mind started going everybody celebrates someone when it's hot do not people sleep when it's hot your people sleep my people would picnic and all that should have never followed you out here but I didn't start the play thinking I was going to write a play about recovering addicts I was going to write about two damaged people that were desperately trying to connect in some way that one of them happened to be an addict and her friends happened to be an addict that was just sort of the texture for the play but really it was about these two damaged people that shouldn't connect that we're trying to really connect so Rosie do you think Connie will call Banny? yeah John you often work in one person comedic shows you've written like ghetto clown no freak, there's been a lot of it about the attraction or the challenge of doing someone else's comedy doing my own one-man shows is being up there alone it's a weird kind of lonely environment this is so much better it's so much better to have stuff to bounce off people and have them to share it's a much more groovy thing the one-man show I just love I love the storytelling of a one-man show more than anything but it's a lonely racket and I'm in a great time David's a really good playwright he's a crafty playwright I think the play sort of masters the form it's a short play and within a short play there are all these reveals and that's really what makes it fun you know going in it's a short play and you're kind of wondering where it's going to go and it's unpredictable and I think all the little doors that are open in the play make it for a fun experience and so I like that your expectations are kind of thrown off you think a lot of things are going to happen and the opposite happens you think they're going to maybe connect and they don't and that's why I like it and obviously the crowd it works thank you alright by David Bradziano yes it was we produced that play at Summer Shorts probably 10 years now and we took it out into the school tour the high school tour and the kids loved that play they loved it so it's fun to see it like that the audience liked it a lot yeah Charmi yeah you guys have some I'll give it to you so I thought as a serious we could do this thing here yes please and all weekend I've been incredibly intimidated to do that get your submarine so I just need so much weight so I need for this one two actors if you have any volunteers one in the back get her get her did you want to I think this is a good example of one of Matt's that he wrote that takes advantage of the fact that you can't see what's going on and I would certainly encourage everybody to write per radio and use it you know instead of constraint how could you just take advantage of that because you can do things you can't do on stage it can be a carry ornament incredible do we need one more actor one more actor come on up so you'll be Terry and I will grab my extensive sound effects kit over here you didn't break a door okay fully arts hi if you guys can hear okay we won't bother with microphones or anything it smells good sorry the last line is cut off might be the best direction you've ever it was make a mess for the I got the first line I know that one okay well this is cozy all tucked up like this yes shoulder to shoulder as it were it's actually fairly comfortable not bad I mean usually when I lie on my back like this it's really uncomfortable hurts my lower back this isn't bad at all that's good it's padded just right I think thoughtful of them it's a pleasant sound if you close your eyes and listen it is kind of nice and it's way exactly like listening to the ocean at night or rain on a roof a tin roof yeah rain on a tin roof I love that life great sound indeed what's that the Smithsonian it's great you should go they have a pendulum there this big weight on a long long rope in the middle of the building amazing I don't remember what it was supposed to show you but it looks cool neat of course strictly speaking that's not a pendulum no it said so I remember not the Smithsonian up there thank you a pendulum moves in a bit of a circle I think that's more straight back and forth true of course the one at the Smithsonian doesn't have the big ax blade at the end I don't imagine I think it came to a point and drew lines in the sand or something like ultimatums no the circles the other one in DC wasn't slowly lowering down either it was just in one place and you didn't have to get tied to a bench to watch it that's an advantage not that I mind being this close to you of course not nice of you to say not at all still it'd be nice to be able to move a little escape maybe if it came up of course what do you think will happen when that lowers all the way down well it'll cut us right in too I should think that doesn't sound fun at all no sort of thing that would kill a person I think that's the idea actually evil geniuses can really be fairly unpleasant of a Sunday afternoon to a spy at least still comes with a job I suppose absolutely and it's been nice spending the afternoon tied up next to you you mean that? I do I've always felt like there's been a distance between us I've never known how to cross it you wanted to? yes I did I don't know what to say it took a mad genius to bring us together life is funny isn't it isn't it just well I feel like I can die a happy man now thank you thank you it's been a thank you guys so much and we can email you I'll do us resources for you and you'll be around for the rest of them thank you everybody information this weekend which will go up on our website as well so that you can have some of the resources to link back to what we've been doing and also please feel free to email us you're going to be getting like surveys and stuff but we'd really like to know what has worked for you and what you'd like to see more of but we may we don't know but really this was great and Seth, thank you thank you these new episodes and whatnot you can go to the site and put your name and the contact thing and we won't bother you other than that so we are we're at six? be back here at seven thirty for cocktails and to start sort of chatting each other up a little bit and drinking so that we can start enjoying the finalist plays that will be next and the other thing I will tell you is this because I think this might have gotten lost a little bit and we'll probably repeat it later but all of you who are at city rights with playwrights although our submission process begins August 30th through September 30th because you are here you can direct