An odd assortment of shoes, bottles, balloons and other items covered a table at the Hugi-Lewis Studio art gallery last Sunday. But the eye-catching array was not artwork for sale. The miniature door in a frame, chimes, a mysterious large chrome box and the rest were part of the battery of sound effects prepared for a dress rehearsal of "The Blood Money Caper."
Based on a Sam Spade detective story by Dashiell Hammett, "The Blood Money Caper" is a radio-play, a drama in which the story is conveyed exclusively by voices and noises. It's a format straight out of the 1930s, when chunky radios with hot, glowing tubes and huge, crackling speakers brought nightly thrills to listeners around the country. Crime and horror, comedy and kiddie shows, Westerns, action-adventures and soap operas entertained millions through their ears.
Television took over in the 1950s, but the radio-play genre has survived as live theater. A radio-play version of "It's a Wonderful Life" was such a hit at Cyrano's during the holiday season of 2011 that the company reprised it the following year. Last year it was presented in Talkeetna.
Live theater radio-plays include some inventive twists, usually involving costumes. "The Blood Money Caper" will feature performers in period costumes, suggesting both the characters they portray and the era of the story. And patrons at the gallery for a free performance, the only one, on Jan. 22 will be able to view the ingenious sound-making devices created by designer Dan Everett.
The door opens and slams, the latch clicks. Snapping clipboards and popped balloons supply gunshots. A impact driver rattling on a nut in a wooden box sounds like a machine gun. A bike bell creates the ring of an old-fashioned telephone. And a live musician, Liu-Hsiu Kuo, provides background music, the theme song and interludes at the keyboard.
"No pre-recorded or digital sounds will be used," director Jocelyn Paine said with a note of pride.
The "star" of the show, as Paine described it, is a 40-year-old siren on loan from the Anchorage Fire Department. "It sounded so good that I wrote it into the script three more times," she said.
"The Blood Money Caper" is part of a recent resurgence in the radio-play art form that has seen national companies presenting shows to packed houses around the country.
One of these shows, "The Intergalactic Nemesis," is now touring Alaska. It played in Petersburg and Juneau earlier this week and is next scheduled for Anchorage, Valdez, Kodiak and Fairbanks. In addition to voice actors, music and sound effects, it includes projections of comic-book panels that illustrate the story.
The show's co-creator, Jason Neulander described the genesis of "Nemesis" in a phone call from his base in Austin, Texas.
"Back in the 1990s, me and some friends came up with the idea of a science fiction radio-play," he said. "I'd founded a theater company about new plays that pushed the envelope on what theater could do. Even though radio drama was an old format, I'd never done it before. I never listened to radio-plays prior to doing it."
Originally, it was the normal sound-only performance. But as it grew in popularity, the show was invited to play in a big Austin theater -- 2,400 seats.
"I thought that was way too big for a theater where basically you have three or four people standing at microphones," Neulander said. "Then at a meeting, kind of in a flash, I envisioned a screen the size of the proscenium arch showing images. I brought it up with the theater management and they said, 'That's funny. We just bought a cinematic projection system and were looking for how to use it.'"
The idea transformed the intimate ambiance of radio into mass-audience spectacle. The script was revised to emphasize the visual aspect and a version accompanied by more than 1,000 images premiered in September 2010.
"Twenty-one hundred people came out and I started booking a tour," Neulander said.
Now his troupe has several plays traveling around the country. Alaska is seeing one titled "Target Earth," in which a plucky reporter helps save the planet.
The garish primary-color illustrations, right out of the Sunday funnies, is the work of Tim Doyle, "a total comic book nerd," Neulander said. "I was never a huge comic book fan, but he really educated me about storytelling that way."
The sound effects expert, Buzz Moran, "has been collecting toys that make noise" for the shows. The collection includes a slide whistle, a box of mac and cheese to suggest a train and whirly tubes to accompany scenes of hypnosis. The tubes are aerophones that produce notes on the overtone scale when spun rapidly, like a bull-roarer. Moran uses two, one cut to a slightly shorter length, to create a dissonance.
Former Anchorage resident Ray Colgan is also part of the team, one of the writers of the original script, and he's helping with marketing as the show comes to his hometown.
The presenting theaters are responsible for supplying projection equipment, Neulander said. And the costuming is pretty simple -- basically civilian street dress from the golden age of radio. So the sound effects are Neulander's main concern when on tour. "We travel pretty light. There are six road cases filled with sound effects and some go as carry-ons."
Which can be a headache at security. "We have to open those cases all the time for TSA," he said. "All the time. They look though everything and ask, 'So what exactly IS this piece of scrap metal?'"
The Blood Money Caper
Presented by the Time Travel Literary Club
When: 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 22
Where: Hugi-Lewis Studio, 1008 W. Northern Lights Blvd.
Free
Intergalactic Nemesis: Target Earth
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 23, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 24
Where: Discovery Theatre
Tickets: $40.24-$53.75 at centertix.net
Additional shows will take place on Jan. 26 in Valdez, Jan. 28 in Kodiak and Jan. 30 in Fairbanks.