Convergence
Mark Time Award Winners 2013
Jun/16/14 20:50
Mark Time Award
GOLD
The Truth: Biological Clock
The Truth
Written by Ira Gamerman
Produced by Jonathan Mitchell
New York, NY
www.thetruthpodcast.com
SILVER
Alone in the Night
Electric Vicuna Productions
Written & Produced by Jack Ward
Michael L. Stokes, Production Engineer
Halifax, Nova Scotia
www.evicuna.com
Ogle Award
GOLD
The Legend of Springheel’d Jack
Wireless Theatre Company
Written by Gareth Parker, Robert Valentine
Producers, Robert Valentine, Gareth Parker, Mariele Runacre-Temple
London, England
www.wirelesstheatrecompany.co.uk
SILVER
The Perhapanauts: Monsters Among Us
AudioComics Company
Written by Todd DeZago, w/Elaine Lee
Produced by William Dufris, Lance Roger Axt, Elaine Lee
Bellingham, WA
audiocomicscompany.com
There’s a lot of audio theater out there on the web. I tell people there’s probably more audio theater being made now than there was during the heyday, the Golden Age of Radio. Maybe that’s true. Maybe it isn’t. It’s certainly true that there’s a bigger variety of works available now. Science fiction and Fantasy are a very large percentage of what’s new in audio drama, partly because it lends itself so well to the medium.
We would like to thank the Geek Partnership Society (GPS) for their generous sponsorship for a dozen years or so, and thank CONvergence for their support in giving us a stage to present the awards and a chance to spread the word that there’s a lot of good audio stories out there. Please give it a listen.
The Mark Time Radio Show
Great Northern Audio has presented the Mark Time Radio Show each year of the Mark Time Awards - though they are related by name, they are really separate events. We have another coming for CONvergence this year, as well. Keep an ear out for Cyber Bob and the Digital Nymph, coming this summer.
Also this summer, Decoder Ring Theatre has taken six of our Mark Time Shows and reproduced them in their own grand manner for the Summer Showcase series of Mark Time Show Time. Check those out, too. They are really fun, if I do say so myself.
However, after this year we will be giving up our place on the schedule of CONvergence. This will be our last dangerous Mark Time Radio Show. It is time for us to move into new ventures and other efforts dear to our hearts. We thank all of you for listening to these shows. We will have new and more ambitious works to come, so keep checking back here for those.
We are also hanging up our stewardship of the beloved Mark Time Awards. It has been a great honor to keep them running since their inception. We have given the reins back to the owners of the character of Mark Time. We don’t know what will happen to them, but we certainly hope they continue - I would love to keep being a judge. I have loved listening to the hundreds of entries all these years. I’ve learned a lot. And if we have encouraged some of you to try to make your audio theater better, then we have succeeded in what we set out to do. We encourage you to keep making great SF audio, and to keep sending it to us here at Great Northern. Jerry still has a radio show to broadcast them on (Sound Affects: A Radio Playground on KFAI), and he’s always looking for new material. We’d love to hear what you think about all this. Comments can be sent through Facebook and Twitter.
FST at CONvergence
Jul/14/12 19:57
With some of the Firesign Theatre at Convergence
Jerry Stearns, Phil Proctor, Melinda Peterson, David Ossman, Brian PriceOver the 4th of July weekend David Ossman and Philip Proctor, of the fabulous Firesign Theatre, attended Convergence, the science fiction convention, at our invitation. They came to help celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the Mark Time Awards, along with several of the Award winners. David’s wife, Judith Walcutt, founder of Otherworld Media, was a Guest of Honor of the convention, as well.
We could not pass up the opportunity to invite them both, along with Phil’s wife, Melinda Peterson, to take parts in the Mark Time Radio Show. With a cast like that, and the regulars we always ask because they are so damn good, we couldn’t lose. Well, we could, but believe me, we didn’t. And neither did the audience. SpaceGirl: Downloading the Legacy was terrific fun, and you’ll get a chance to hear it shortly in this space.
But, wait, there’s more. There were several panels that included David, or Phil, or Melinda, or Judith, or some combination of them. On one, titled All Things Firesign, the subject of how the 4 or 5 Crazy Guys worked together came up. It was mentioned that there is an audio piece floating around that demonstrates their process in a rehearsal of the Hellos and Goodbyes section at the end of the 1998 album, Give Me Immortality Or Give Me Death. They have given us permission to post that piece here. It’s 17 minutes long, and 20 MB.
If you’d like to hear more of Ossman at the Twin Cities conventions, check the left-hand column for a link to Coming Soon To A Galaxy Near You, part of a program on the film history of George Tirebiter, performed at Minicon 1996. And give us a couple of weeks and we’ll post the SpaceGirl show, starring Melinda Peterson as SpaceGirl, and Phil Proctor as Dr. Creep.