I’m delighted to announce that Part One of my poetic podcast, Miss Experience White, will be out late next month, produced by me, David Lawrence, and James McKee, with sound design by James McKee, and featuring the music of It Thing. All visuals created by underground artist John H. Seabury, and there’s a 2021 wall calendar in the works, too, inspired by the poems upon which the podcast is based.

Available here on my site and Spotify, the free radio drama will arrive in several parts over the next 6-8 months. Part One, Vision & Revelation, is an invocation of “Tyrannosaurus Wonderbread, the Pearly White Demon,” a personification of America’s darkest aspects, and appropriately will be available close to Halloween. (The Wonderbread family is pictured above.) Metaphors of the supernatural freed me creatively in the writing process and now appear to liberate us producers as well: we ‘re having fun while making John Lewis’ brand of “good trouble,” showing “listeners a creative way to confront some uncomfortable truths... their relationship to privilege... at a time of deep cultural reckoning and division,” as Dave says.

A radio play seems like such an obviously good idea now, but I wasn’t thinking of it late last year, when I was trying out the poems at open mics and wondering how I would perform the whole thing live. In the past few years, most of us live performers have found it’s been getting harder to coax people out to shows, what with the competition of Netflix-on-the-couch (and never mind the lack of parking.) I also wanted to reach as wide an audience as possible, so even before the Covid 19 lockdown I was thinking about YouTube (Just sit there and read? Boring!) or a dramatic podcast. But then came the lockdown, and I called up my old pal Dave, who has a commanding, comprehensive background in digital media arts, and asked if he wanted to produce a podcast with me. He was working on a virtual reality project with the band The Residents at the time.

He read my 10,000-word poem cycle and pronounced it “epic,” later recounting how he was “blown away by the vision and scope... and realized this was the kind of project that would really shine with Jim’s sound design brilliance.” I was thrilled to hear this, knowing the work of Jim and his company, Earwax Productions. Past sound design projects have included everything from Ai Weiwei’s Alcatraz installation to the movie “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Jim also does sound design for the ongoing podcast The Kitchen Sisters.

David Lawrence and James McKee met at Lucasfilm in 1987 and have “worked together on some crazy creative projects for over 30 years” according to McKee. An early one of those was Virtual Paradise in 1993. I remember listening to it back then, feeling amazed while immersed in its audio realm. Today I feel extremely fortunate to be working with such gifted, skilled people; one I’ve just met, and the other an old friend.

I met Dave in high school in the mid 70’s. We were both members of “The Tea Club,” a group of prankster misfits. We’ve worked together many times (he edited most of the video clips on my theater page), but this project is different. Last year we lost another Tea Clubber, Mark Zanandrea, longtime member of the Bay Area underground music scene and frontman of the band It Thing. Because the music of It Thing is foundational to the podcast, it felt right for Dave and I to co-produce under the name “The Tea Club,” in acknowledgement of Mark’s posthumous musical contribution and to celebrate artistic bonds that began forming when we were all just kids, some 40 years ago.

The collaboration process has been exciting! I agree with Dave when he says, “Everyone's bringing their mastery and best creative juices to the table... I love the willingness to... push for a visionary outcome.”

And from Jim, “I'm enjoying everyone's professionalism and openness to new ideas and stretching the boundaries of what radio drama can be.”

Professionalism? Hmmm... I guess it was okay they saw my rumpled sweat pants at the last Zoom meeting.

Onward!

Milo