Topic: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

Hey all! Proposed this in the chat the gauge interest but am now making a proper post about it: would we be up for recording a full-cast audiobook as a forum quarantine project?

We'd want to stick to something that's fairly short to make sure we wouldn't have to coordinate too many recording sessions, and we'd also have to make sure it's something with a cast that doesn't exceed our numbers, but I thought it'd be a cool forum-wide project! As for what we'd do, consider this thread to be opening it up to suggestions in addition to asking people if they'd like to participate. Hitchhiker's Guide? Fahrenheit 451? Something else entirely??

Anyway, if you'd be interested in recording and/or recommending a book, sound off here! We can coordinate details once we have a team assembled and a project picked.

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

I'm up for it, depending on what our adoption situation is. Could literally change at any second. But feel free to pencil me in to act and/or narrate. smile

Witness me!

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

drew is in.

The "Guide" is an exciting suggestion, but perhaps has already done itself to death.
Maybe take a look at Librivox? We could re-do something as a group project there?

Eh?
https://librivox.org/author/558

Last edited by drewjmore (2020-08-25 14:05:31)

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

I'm in! Struggling to think of a book, though.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

As much as I'd love to do Hitchhikers, we're probably better off doing something public domain.

Ideally, we need something that's not too long, has a decent amount of characters, and is something we could have a bit of fun with. I'm coming up blank right now though. I was thinking Flatland, but most of it is just first-person narration.

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

(Ooh. Maybe a play?)

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

Obviously, I'm in.

As for what to read, I will keep pondering, but initial thoughts:

  • maybe one of the Oz sequels? could be fun

  • one of charles mee's plays? hotel cassiopeia is the first that comes to mind for me, and I think you could narrate the few stage directions. may be too poetic for y'alls taste, idk

  • Cory Doctorow has a bunch of stuff available under the CC Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license, so we could do Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom or another of his books

alicia ♆
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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

Wow, there's a lot on that Charles Mee site. I'd be game for some of those, as long as I don't have to read them all to decide which...

...and now I've wiki'ed Doctorow, and I'm super on board with that too. No help from me deciding things today folks.

Last edited by drewjmore (2020-08-26 02:28:34)

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

Ooh, I'm down for all of these but especially the latter two, Alice! I think a play sounds the most fun but I'm game for anything.

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

A play would be a manageable length. What we pick would depend on who & how many of us are participating.

There is one public domain play I would love to do—Edmond Rostand's The Romancers (which became the basis for the musical The Fantasticks.

alicia ♆
twitter | instagram | website

Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

I said so in chat, but I'm in smile Excited for play or Doctorow as well - I haven't read any Doctorow but I've always meant to.

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

Welp, it looks like at the moment there are eight of us—BDA signed up in chat! With that in mind—looks like The Romancers is six speaking parts, plus someone to read the stage directions, but we'd be short one role. Let's keep it in mind though in case one of us has to drop!

Looks like Hotel Cassiopeia is seven speaking parts and someone to read the stage directions, which at the moment would be perfect.

Also looks like for Doctorow, according to the wiki, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is eight characters, and we could recruit someone else (either from this forum or IRL) to act as narrator!

So we've got options for sure.

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

I am incredibly psyched about this. Unless anyone comes along with a strong opinion in the next day or two, I'd guess we're willing to trust ya with choosing the text and casting.

Let's read books!

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

Perf. Next day or two open for strong opinions, after which we can get this show on the road! (Alice, if we start with Hotel would you be down to do casting, as you're the most familiar with?)

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

I developed voices for every Harry Potter character by reading the series aloud, twice, before I saw the movies. Does that make me an //accomplished// voice actor? Maybe, maybe not, but rest assured my, "In drag as Queen Elizabeth," brings the house down every time.
That's my audition.


<research:>

Last edited by drewjmore (2020-08-27 23:18:31)

(UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

I'm down to join in on this, but don't feel like you need to expand things to accommodate me

"ShadowDuelist is a god."
        -Teague Chrystie

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

*popping back in* Hey all! Sorry for the delay—work has been . . . work.

If there are no objections, how does this sound: we start with Hotel Cassiopeia with seven of us playing parts and one taking stage directions. Then, after that, if we're all still on board, we move to Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, with eight of us playing MCs and one of us narrating (I need to read the book and see if there are more than the eight characters listed on Wikipedia—if that's the case, we can always divvy up the minor parts among ourselves). For the former, we'd have to have one member sit out—I'm happy to just sit in on the recording so everyone who's signed up here can participate, or Shadow could jump onboard with Doctorow. Or, Shadow, if Writhyn's adoption situation ends up changing you could come onboard now! Whatever works best for everyone here, I am a coward and don't like telling people what to do. tongue

In any event, first things first will be for us to independently read the play to get familiar with the parts. Could everyone here who hasn't already done so PM me their email address? We can get an email chain going to coordinate roles/scheduling/etc.

Excited!

Last edited by Abbie (2020-09-02 04:48:25)

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

I have passed along my information, and eagerly await the scene wherein you post the cast list on the bulletin board and we all rush forward to see which part we got.

EDIT: And reading it. Obviously that first.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

This is all obvious googling, but I'll just record my trip down the various rabbit holes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Cornell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolee_Schneemann
https://kam.illinois.edu/artist/carolee-schneemann
(but I still don't get why the stage directions have her playing the cello)

So now this has become strangely personal for me: I also have a severely disabled brother with CP, and I spent lots of time around Krannert at U of Illinois.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_Kusama
"26 years his junior"
"LEILA
Well,
more than twice my age."

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

Didn't know about your brother. Older or younger? What's he like?

(Sorry to derail.)

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

It hardly ever comes up.
I'm oldest of 3 brothers, born '74 '76 '78.
Andrew, Benjamin, Charles.
Ben is a new father & union stagehand who directs the building of sets and whatnot for TV, film & Theater.

Charlie had his first seizure as a very new infant while my mother gave him a bath in the kitchen sink, my memory is of being in the next room and hearing her hysterically calling 911. You can't really tell in childhood photos of Charlie that there's anything unusual about him, but he never progressed beyond mental infancy. "Agenesis of the corpus collossum," is the concise description of the birth defect that causes his disability. He's heavily dosed with anti-convulsant barbiturates at all times. After a concerted, years long effort of ad-hoc physical therapy, he learned to walk (with an uncannily zombie-esque shambling gait) at around age 8, against the predictions of doctors.

When you encounter him in person, he presents as a deeply autistic man with crippling cerebral palsy, somewhat wiry and small in stature. Most individuals with CP are mentally and cognitively normal. Charlie does not speak or understand language, feed himself, or provide for his own hygiene.

40-something now, he is technically a ward of the state, lives in a group home a few towns over. Our parents visit him regularly. Food, music, warm sunbeams & jingly-squeaky-noisy toys make him happy. We have him over for holidays. He has a job, as required by law, but it involves sitting in a bean bag and staying out of the way of the other, less profoundly disabled, folks in the workshop.

Gilbert Grape, Mice and Men, The Goonies... these stories hit me differently than they do other people.

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

Looks like all I'm missing is Writhyn and Shadow's addresses—if you guys could shoot those my way I'll start the email chain!

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

Drew, thanks for writing that. (I tried eight different additional sentences. I've got nothing.)

Thanks. Complicated situation, well and empathically explained.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

Friends I'm really sorry but I definitely don't have the bandwidth for this. Got some potential adoptive placements going on (yay!) moving forward now...I can't commit the time.

Witness me!

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Re: Tales in Your Shelter Assemble (Shelters Will Tale)

Yay! No worries whatsoever—crossing fingers for the placements!

That just leaves Shadow then!

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