NH Unscripted with Ray Dudley

My goodness, I LOVE this time of the year! Today’s WKXL NH Unscripted guest was my friend and the Artistic Director for the North Country Center for the Arts @Jean’s Playhouse Joel Mercier.  Joel and his company just wrapped up their summer season and so it was time to talk about how he thought it went, what’s on the horizon and, of course, we couldn’t leave out a quick discussion of his new kittens! Topics that we really spent some time on were “Ghostlight” (the very popular and un-traditional haunted house), “A Christmas Carol” (now an extremely beloved seasonal staple) and “Taste of Jean’s” (the annual event where next seasons roster is revealed). Always a great guest with great stories!

For those of you who have been quietly asking yourselves: “When is Ray going to have someone on the show to talk about marketing?”, well, Bucky, this is your lucky day! In this episode, Joe Walker of Joe Walker Marketing Services calls in and chats about that very subject. Joe kindly educates me on topics such as Guerrilla Marketing, SWOT analysis, Fractional CEO-ing, why, how and when to create a business, business funding, presentations and his guest speaking services. He brings up an example of money NOT well spent trying to market a product (it happened during a Superbowl). When you might need to “rebrand” your product and why. Possible speed bumps when trying to expand nationally and much, much more (of course).

It’s time for WKXL's NH Unscripted to talk about upcoming productions and auditions around the state. The NH professional season is pretty much wrapped and now it’s time for the community theater groups to step forward and get some of good loving and attention! Groups we highlight today are the Pittsfield Players, Powerhouse Theatre, tKapow, Discovering Magic (Mr. Pinard), Lend Me a Theater, Jean’s Playhouse, the Players Ring, and lastly, the Winnie. We toss in some quick hits for the NH Film Festival and the Music Hall, drop some info and deets on upcoming guests and episodes and voila! Another award winning episode!!!

It’s time for a Jean’s Playhouse “Misery” recap! Having just finished two very successful weekends performing “Misery” I thought I would grab Alex Picard (Annie Wilkes) and Adam Kee (Paul Sheldon) for some quick thoughts on the production. In their opinions which scenes were the most difficult for each of them? What was their character development process like? Did you find the show successful? What happens next for each of them? And of course, sooooo much more!!

Today’s guest was my new friend Adam Kee. Adam is an Equity actor currently co-starring, along with Alex Picard (a previous guest on the show), in “Misery” at the North Country Center for the Arts at Jean’s Playhouse in Lincoln. We sit down and talk about the production, his journey from novice to union actor, his methods/tips for performing, and some plain ole’ jawboning between to friends. Excellent time!

A return visit from our friend Jim Rosenberg brings up a discussion about the Olympics, break dancing, pickle ball, Stephen King’s “Misery” @ Jean’s Playhouse in Lincoln, Copenhagen, trips to NYC and, as always, sooooo much more!

NH Unscripted at WKXL was originally crafted with the idea of letting the listening audience get a glimpse of what and how our artists do the things they do to bring the magic to our stages or screens. Today I had the honor of speaking with a longtime friend and brilliant mind Kevin Collins. Kevin’s has been an actor, director, writer, teacher, principal and mentor over the years and during that time he wrote/created a series of vignettes that made me think of early radio programs like The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Jack Benny, etc. and it gave me the idea to see if he’d be interested in airing them maybe on a weekly or monthly basis for the NH Unscripted audience. But, I also wanted to let the listeners in on the process of creating the show/characters and today’s episode is the beginning of that task. We start by talking about humor. It’s history, how it’s in our DNA, why we laugh at certain things and not others. It’s a fascinating delve it the topic and we barely scratch the surface. I think this will turn out to be a tremendous series and I hope you find it as captivating as I do.

Getting to chat with friends makes for some of the best WKXL NH Unscripted episodes and this one with Deirdre Bridge is a great example of that. This get together was supposed to happen earlier, but, got delayed. (Okay, I forgot about it and was cutting my grass! There, you happy?) I was curious about her role in the tKapow production of Paradise Now! as well as what it was like to work at the Bank of NH Stage, but, as the conversation continued things just kept going off the rails!! Deirdre cracked me up and then tossed me under the bus a couple of (well deserved) times. I really enjoy our theater community and chats like this one are big reasons why. Enjoy.

Co-star in Donald Tongue’s award winning short film “Home Burial”, Michael Cobb from “truepenny arts” dropped in the WKXL NH Unscripted studio and gave me a captivating hour talking about his upcoming workshops. Stage actors looking for an edge should lend an ear to today’s episode. Here is just a sample of his pedigree: “…movement improv in Boston, onstage at Trinity (including study and casting and advice by/from Richard Jenkins, some other names), including three-hander with another Tony nominee/Olympic Speed skater/Renfield to Frank Langella’s Dracula on Broadway, Dallas Theatre Center lead, crashing Emmy-winning choreographer’s audition and getting national broadcast on PBS out of it, year as leadership in the now Gamm Theater there, M.A. at Brown, years in the Adirondacks doing theatre, training at A.R.T./Moscow Art Theatre School to be voice/speech/text coach, STUDYING ACTING WITH MOSCOW ART THEATRE FACULTY, going to Moscow to study/teach/see theatre for three months, getting hired as Head of Voice, Speech, and Text (including teaching Shakespeare) at National Theatre Conservatory in Denver (including coaching at Denver Center Theater)…” Well worth the listen.

Franklin Footlight Theatre showed up to chat about their upcoming production of SPAMALOT. We had actors, an assistant director, a choreographer, one person just hanging out and taking pictures (I’m looking at you Olivia Martenson!). And talked about classic Monty Python gags, laughs, audience expectations, crappy accents (except my Inspector Clouseau French one was spot on), and thanks to Hayley de Sousa we even (gingerly) threw in some info on their NEXT show TWISTED. SPAMALOT has all of the characters that you would expect including King Arthur, Lancelot (the homicidally brave), Lady of the Lake (complete with Laker Girls), Sir Robin (the Not-Quite-So-Brave-as-Sir-Lancelot), Sir Galahad, Sir Bedevere, Patsy, Prince Herbert, Concorde and many more. I’m breakin’ a sweat just typing it all!! Show dates and tickets: Aug 1-4 at the Hamilton Hall, Tilton School.