SO, WHERE DOES THE NAME "VIOLET CROWN RADIO PLAYERS" COME FROM? The writer O. Henry called Austin, Texas, the City of the Violet Crown, ostensibly because of our beautiful purple sunsets. We're an Austin-based troupe, hence the name.

How do I become a member of the Players? We'd love to have you! We're always on the lookout for new talent. If you're an actor, SFX specialist, sound engineer, writer, marketer, or just want to generally lend a hand, email the appropriate party in our DIRECTORY.

Can the Violet Crown Radio Players perform for my private event? You bet! We love to perform for a variety of audiences. Our show format is very flexible and our performances don't require much space. Our private performance rates are quite reasonable, and we will work hard to customize our show to meet your needs. The Players are perfect for benefit events, dinner entertainment, or even private parties in your home! To discuss booking the Players for your event, contact us at booking@violetcrownradio.com.

I have xyz I'd like to donate to the Players. Who do I talk to? Wow, thanks! The VCRP runs on a shoestring budget. A frayed-almost-worn-out shoestring budget, at that. We'd love to have your donation. E-mail heidel@violetcrownradio.com, and we'll get back to you as soon as possible!

I'd like to be updated about upcoming performances and VCRP news. Do you have a mailing list? You bet! E-mail us at mailinglist@violetcrownradio.com, and we'll put you on our e-mail information list. We absolutely, positively, guarantee we'll keep your e-mail address private. We'll never sell it, give it away, or even let our friends peek at it. We swear!

Here’s what other people have said about us:

BY ROBERT FAIRES

THE BLUE MENACE

Ventana del Soul, through June 5

Running time: 1 hr, 15 min

The greatest special effects ever came from radio drama. I'm not just talking about the glorious sound effects, although it's mighty hard to beat those ingenious evocations of natural (and unnatural) sounds worked up by Foley artists at tables loaded with an oddball array of props. I also mean the spectacular visual effects created simply by the words in the script and the way they were delivered by the actors speaking into the microphone. With no strict visual representation to rein in the audience's imagination, as in theatre or the movies, the mind was the limit. One could imagine settings more lavish, action more daring, horrors more gruesome than Hollywood or Broadway at their most opulent could deliver.

That lesson hit home again last week after listening to the latest program from the Violet Crown Radio Players, a community theatre company now in its third season. In the first half of the "broadcast," a performance of the actual 1945 radio drama Rocket From Manhattan, astronauts on their way back from the moon witness a series of catastrophic explosions on Earth. The intelligent if moralistic script by Arch Oboler – something of the Rod Serling of radio – offered just enough of a description of the devastation to set the mind going, and when that was coupled with the shock conveyed by actors Kristin Freeman, T.E. Heidel, and Ryan Hill, it encouraged one to summon up genuinely unsettling visions of an apocalypse. In this time of war and anxiety over terrorist attacks, Oboler's doomsday tale delivered a sobering punch not too different, I expect, from the one it served up when it originally aired.

In a considerably lighter vein was the show's second half, an adventure of the Blue Menace, a sapphire-masked knockoff of the Shadow by way of Indiana Jones. (He has mystical mental powers, and his alter ego is an archaeology professor, see?) The creation of Austin writer Mark Finn, the Blue Menace is a loving tribute to those mysterious crimefighters of the Thirties and the extravagant evils they faced. In this episode, titled "Death by Raven," it's blackbirds gone wild. Finn, who penned the script and directs it from a chair downstage center, has ravens peck to death various colleagues of our hero at the behest of a seriously ticked-off Celtic goddess. With just a few caws from cast members and slapping gloves to suggest flapping wings, I was able to conjure a truly macabre murder scene – which was, as odd as it may sound, great fun.

The pleasures afforded by Violet Crown go beyond its stimulus of the imagination, though. Finn has a strong sense of radio drama's rhythms and a finely tuned ear for that era's slang and snappy patter, which his actors – none of them old enough to have experienced radio drama in its heyday – deliver with surprising skill. Cathy Day, as sardonic gal Friday Charlotte, is a real peach in this regard, and as our true-blue hero, Heidel holds his own. The vintage dress worn by the cast, the retro tunes provided by the Puddin' Hill Jass Babies, and "a few words from our sponsors" all add to the show's nostalgic delights and make this an appealing return to yesteryear.

Out On the Porch
Violet Crown Radio

In the golden age of radio, actors, musicians and sound effects technicians created wondrous worlds that only the ear could love.

Here in Austin, the Violet Crown Radio Players recreate that age, but with a difference: you get to watch them in action.

Out On the Porch, Jim Swift takes us to rehearsal for their upcoming production of an American holiday classic.

(The following is a transcript of Out On the Porch.)

Man says: "Fourteen-one, action."

Actors say: "OK the moon, I'll take it, then what? Then what?  Well, well then you could swallow it."

T. E. Heidel, the founder of the Violet Crown Radio Players, grew up listening to radio theater in Dallas. Listening to it and liking it.

Actors say: "Why don't you kiss her instead of talking her to death? How's that? Ah, youth is wasted on the wrong people."

Heidel says: "You could make something out of, out of nothing. That the whole thing came out of your head. And the stories and the sounds evoked something and it was sort of like reading. More like reading or theater, in that you had to do some work; you had to put some work into it. And I really enjoyed that."

Swift says: "I been watching you all over here."
Sound effects technician Ben Gibbs says: "All right."
Swift says: "And I, I can't help but notice: What is this?"
Gibbs says: "That's the brakes on the car."
Swift says: "The brakes on the car."
Gibbs says: "Yeah."
Swift asks: "Could you show me?"
Gibbs says: "Absolutely. You set the brakes across this pane of glass here. You have to get all the nails on; just like nails on a chalkboard, it's great."

Screeching.

Crunching gravel.

Heidel says: "The nice thing about radio drama is that you can, you can make a ten million or a hundred million dollar blockbuster with a couple o' coconuts and a piece of string."

But once you know how to tell a radio story, the next question is, what radio story to tell.

Actors say: "George. Yeah, I'm out here on the porch, mother."

For Heidel, the holiday season demanded It's A Wonderful Life, even if the story is already embedded on the American psyche.

Heidel says: "We are up against some stiff competition but we try to make it our own. And again, this is radio drama, so it's something that people are a little less familiar with. And even though they might know the characters, we've tried to, we tried to steer clear of just mimicking the movie."
 
Swift, impersonating Jimmy Stewart, asks: "David, do you have any trouble not sounding like Jimmy Stewart?"

Actor David Pagano says: "That's always a concern; you know, I think sometimes people expect Jimmy Stewart and people that look like Jimmy Stewart or act like Jimmy Stewart. But we came in and just did the roles as ourselves or the characters we created and think the audience will accept it."

Actors says: "Here, honey, here's your bell. Daddy."

Heidel says: "There are a lot of things, especially in the holiday season, that are just coming at you from every side. I mean, with the media and the advertisers and everything out there, Christmas has become pretty commercial. And this is something that harkens back to maybe a simpler time when things were a little bit slower. And hopefully, we can give people a taste of that this holiday season."

Actor says: "Happy landings."

The Violet Crown Radio Players production of It's A Wonderful Life runs the next two weekends at Ventana Del Soul at 1834 East Oltorf.