Mark Time Awards
HEAR Now Festival Presents
The 22nd Annual Mark Time Awards
June 7th, in Kansas City, MO, the HEAR Now Festival will host the presentation of the Mark Time Awards for 2018. The ceremony will include a performance of Great Northern Audio Theatre’s Dialogue with Martian Trombone, starring David Ossman and Philip Proctor, of the famed Firesign Theatre.
The Mark Time Awards are well known in the field of contemporary Audio Theater for their recognition of the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres. In cooperation with the HEAR Now Festival of Audio Fiction they have expanded to include detective stories, and this year added a comedy category. They are named after the Mark Time character created by the American comedy troupe, the Firesign Theatre, and have been actively supporting audio drama since 1997. Mark Time Awards are given internationally, and have been won by producers from Ireland, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Belgium and all across the United States.
The HEAR Now Festival will run June 7-10, 2018 in Kansas City, and includes many other performances and workshops in the fields of audio storytelling, audiobooks, podcasting, childrens literature, and a celebration of Mark Twain. You can hear more from the Firesign Theatre, too.
In The Embers
Independent Feature-length Audio release
Great Northern Audio is pleased to announce In The Embers, our new feature-length audio play which premiered at the HEAR Now Audio Fiction Festival in Kansas City last week. Stay tuned as we prepare several avenues for distribution of this exciting audio experience.
Urban archaeologist Digger Morgan has this new technique using a laser to read what’s embedded in the charcoal of a burned wooden post. He doesn’t expect to find voices. It’s two girls who were in the barn when the post was burned, and now he wants to know who they are. He also doesn’t expect it when one of those voices starts talking to him from his computer. Kit Jeffers was an up-and-coming jazz singer in the 1920s, and now she’s asking him just as many questions as he’s asking her. She’s smart, she’s sassy and saavy, and she wants to go home. Good science fiction, engaging characters, original music and terrific sound design make this well worth listening to.
A brand new audio play from Great Northern Audio, starring Robin Miles as Kit Jeffers, and Edwin Strout as Digger. With original songs by Brian Price and Mike Wheaton. Mixed at the ZBS studios in upstate New York, with Tom Lopez. CDs are available online currently through Uncle Hugo’s SF Bookstore and Dreamhaven Books.
“The story is excellent, the music is excellent, the audio quality is excellent, and so are the actors. This is a drama that goes in the permanent collection.” See this recent review of In The Embers by Scott Danielson of SFFaudio.com.
– – –
New Mark Time Awards
And while we were there at the HEAR Now Festival, we shared a Second Place Audience Favorite Award for the presentation of the new Mark Time Awards. Brian Price and Jerry Stearns played excerpts of this year’s winners in the mornng, and Judith Walcutt produced the Mark Time Awards presentation ceremony on Friday evening, with David Ossman doing the honors. See the Mark Time Awards website for a complete list. It was probably the kids from the Paseo Academy of Fine and Performing Arts, who wrote and performed their own work that won the audience over, though. So they really should have this award.
It was the first year for the new Nick Danger Prize for best detective/suspense audio theater, and we are sad to pass on that the real Nick Danger, Phil Austin of the Firesign Theatre, passed away on Thursday, June 18, just the day before the prize with his likeness on it was given out. Here’s the LA Times obituary.
Mark Time Award Winners 2013
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.
Convergence Con Report
Mark Time At Convergence 2013
The Mark Time Awards were presented at Convergence 2013 on July the Fourth. See an entry below for a list of the winners. And many thanks to the Geek Partnership Society for their continuing support of the Mark Time Awards and other events. But that wasn't the only remarkable thing that happened to audio theater at Convergence.
Attending the convention were several of the current Mark Time and Ogle Awards winners, including Jonathan Mitchell of The Truth, Jeffrey Gardner and Clayton Faits of Our Fair City, and Domien de Groot and Eline Hoskens of Audio-Epics in Belgium. And it gets better. Also around for the fun were several past Awards winners, such as Fred Greenhalgh of FinalRune, Scott Hickey of The Grist Mill, Matthew Beaudreau of Aural Stage, Jeffrey Adams of Icebox Radio, and Cayenne Chris Conroy of the Teknikal Diffikulties podcast. Oh, and Brian Price and Jerry Stearns of Great Northern Audio were there, as usual, to start it all off with the Mark Time Radio Show.
Sitting: Brian Price, Jerry Stearns, Richard Fish, Kris Markman.
Front row standing: Domien De Groot, Jonathan Mitchell.
Second row: Eline Hoskens, Peter van Riet, Jeffrey Adams, Scott Hickey.
Third Row: Jeffrey Gardner, Clayton Faits.
Back Row: Fred Greenhalgh, Cayenne Chris Conroy, Matthew Beaudreau.
Room 404
Since there are so many of these audio type people attending Convergence lately, Fred, Matthew and Jeff Adams decided it was a good idea to hold a party… for the whole weekend. So they initiated the Mark Time Broadcast Central party room on the fourth floor. That was the official title, anyway. But throughout the weekend we all came to call it just Room 404. It seemed such an appropriate number.
Up in 404 they set up a makeshift recording studio, with microphones, sound deadening backdrops, sound effects inputs and recording devices. And they invited anyone dropping by to take the opportunity to see just how much fun it is to record your own audio drama. They handed everybody a script, assigned parts, put on the headphones, and gave them their cue. If you'd like to hear some of the results, Fred uploaded them to SoundCloud, and you can give a listen at: https://soundcloud.com/marktimebroadcast .
Besides the above mentioned audio people hanging around 404 you could find Monique Beaudreau, Matthew's wife (who designed the poster identifying the room as Broadcast Central), Dave Irwin, the sound effects artist for Icebox Radio, Peter van Riet, the composer for those marvelous Audio-Epics productions, Dr. Kris Markman, who often sits in with Great Northern to help present the Mark Time Radio Show, Chase Peterson, who is an inestimable MT Show production assistant, and Brian's daughter, Eleanor Price, who is Great Northern's most valuable critic, and has composed and performed the music for several Mark Time Radio Shows. It gets to be quite a gathering.
Fred posted a few photos from Convergence that you might find inspiring.
http://finalrune.com/gallery/convergence-cvg-2013
Audio networking
And that's the point. Convergence has become a place where audio theater producers and participants can meet, have fun, and make contacts that wouldn't happen otherwise. More than one collaborative production has come out of meetings at Convergence over the past few years. And more were talking about it this year.
The Mark Time Radio Show
As has been mentioned, we present the Mark Time Radio Show just before the Opening Ceremonies at Convergence. It's an original science fiction / fantasy comedy radio show from the Great Northern Audio Theatre. This one is loosely related to the convention's theme of British Invasion, and is titled The Sword in the Couch. (36 minutes) Picture a Victorian mansion as you would find on Summit Avenue in St. Paul. The lights are coming on in the third floor apartment, the one with the turret on the southwest corner. Urban fantasy in a TV sitcom.
War of the Worlds contest
Convergence Programming Head Craig Finseth came up with the idea to celebrate this year’s 75th Anniversary of the Orson Welles’ broadcast of the War of the Worlds by holding a contest and invited people to make a tribute show. With a maximum length of 15 minutes, and only a few other criteria, they wanted story options to be as open as possible. You can hear all the entries on the contest website at: http://waroftheworlds75.com/submission/. Look under Matt’s Sat Feed to hear them all.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
All in all I’d say it was a very successful convention for audio theater. Many panels on audio subjects such as productions styles, voice acting, podcasting, and writing for audio. How does that sound to you? Registration for Convergence 2014 - A Midsummer Night’s Dream - is still at its lowest cost. See more at http://www.convergence-con.org/. Who knows who might be there.
Mark Time Awards winners
Jun/11/13 16:35 Filed in: Mark Time Awards
Mark Time & Ogle Awards for the 2012 production year.
Mark Time judges Jerry Stearns and Brian Price will be presenting 15 Years of the Mark Time and Ogle Awards at the HEAR Now Festival, June 20-23 in Kansas City, MO. This “audio film festival” is presented by the National Audio Theatre Festivals, and is a showcase for all kinds of audio storytelling, including audio theater, audiobooks, comedy, and more. Find out what’s there at http://www.hearnowfestival.org.
Mark Time Award
GOLD
The Truth: The Modern Prometheus
The Truth
Written by Greg Kotis
Producer, Jonathan Mitchell
New York, NY
www.thetruthapm.com
SILVER
Titanium Rain, Episode One
Audiocomics
Written by Josh Finney
Pacific Grove, CA
Audiocomicscompany.com
&
Our Fair City, Season 3
HartLife NFP
Clayton Faits, Head Writer
Jeffrey Gardner, Executive Producer
Chicago IL
www.OurFairCity.com
Ogle Award
GOLD
The Will of the Woods
Audio Epics
Written & Produced by Domien De Groot
Deurne, Belgium
www.audio-epics.com
SILVER
The Truth: In Good Hands
The Truth
Written by Louis Kornfeld & Jonathan Mitchell
Producer, Jonathan Mitchell
New York, NY
www.thetruthapm.com
&
The Truth: That’s Democracy
The Truth
Written by Louis Kornfeld & The Truth
Producer, Jonathan Mitchell
New York, NY
www.thetruthapm.com
Find out more at the Mark Time website. Be sure to check out the Mark Time SF Audio Hall of Fame, too.
FST at CONvergence
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.
Mark Time Awards 2011
Jun/17/12 20:03 Filed in: Mark Time Awards | Firesign Theatre
The Mark Time Awards - 2011
Mark Time Awards
GOLD
Brad Lansky and the 4D-Verse
Protophonic
Written by J. D. Venne
Producer, Dieter Zimmermann
www.protophonic.net
SILVER
My Other Self
Stagestruck Audio Theatre
Written & Produced by Bret Jones
&
Our Fair City, Season 2
HartLife NFP
Written by Clayton Faits & others
www.OurFairCity.com
EXCELLENCE IN ADAPTATION
The Martian Chronicles
Colonial Radio Theatre on the Air
Story by Ray Bradbury
Dramatized by Jerry Robbins
Producer, Seth Adam Sher
www.colonialradio.com
&
Logan’s Run – Last Day
Colonial Radio Theatre on the Air
Written by Jason Brock, William F. Nolan & Paul Salamoff
Producer, Seth Adam Sher
www.colonialradio.com
Ogle Awards
GOLD
Intensive Care
Final Rune & AuralStage Productions
Written by James Comtois
Producers, Fred Greenhalgh, Matthew Boudreau, Samantha Mason
www.finalrune.com/intensive-care/
www.auralstage.com/2011/10/intensive-care/
&
Ghost of a Chance
19 Nocturne Boulevard
Written & produced by Julie Hoverson
www.19nocturneboulevard.com
SILVER
The Strange Case of Springheel’d Jack
Wireless Theatre Company
Written by Gareth Parker, Robert Valentine
Producers, Robert Valentine, Gareth Parker, Mariele Runacre-Temple
www.wirelesstheatrecompany.co.uk
---------------------------------------------------
The 15th Mark Time Awards will be presented July 5, 2012 at CONvergence, in Bloomington, MN. Representatives from four of the seven production organizations will be present to accept their awards, as will several past winners and four of the five judges.
Mark Time is a character created in 1970 by the Firesign Theatre. Phil Proctor and David Ossman of Firesign will also be attending CONvergence to help celebrate the occasion, along with their wives, Melinda Peterson and Judith Walcutt. Judith is a convention Guest of Honor, too. And they'll all be participating in events throughout the convention, including the Mark Time Radio Show, just before the Opening Ceremonies.
We encourage you to look up the winners and give them a listen. You'll find some excellent storytelling.
For more information about CONvergence: www.convergence-con.org.
For more about the Mark Time Awards: www.greatnorthernaudio.com/MarkTime/MarkTime.html.
Jerry Stearns
Coordinator, Mark Time Awards
Mark Time Awards Deadline
Jan/12/12 20:45 Filed in: Mark Time Awards
The deadline for entry in the annual Mark Time Awards is March 1. That’s a postmark deadline. So start getting your entries together. And send us your best stuff. Everyone else is.
The Mark Time Awards for Science Fiction Audio theater, and the Ogle Awards for Fantasy and Horror Audio theater are given each year for the best productions of the year. They are presented at Convergence, the largest Twin Cities science fiction convention, this year on July 5.
We’ve made a change this year in the entry procedure. You now need only send in one audio or MP3 CD of your entry, or tell us where we can download the files. We’ll distribute them to the judges in MP3 format. But be sure the MP3 is at least 256 kbps and 16 bit depth, and include all the ID3 tags you can. ID3 tags are text information embedded in the file and can be added using iTunes or any number of audio editors. Please include title, artist, author, year, track numbers, and you can put your website in the “comments” tag. You do still have to send in the entry form and fee.
The Mark Time Awards for Science Fiction Audio theater, and the Ogle Awards for Fantasy and Horror Audio theater are given each year for the best productions of the year. They are presented at Convergence, the largest Twin Cities science fiction convention, this year on July 5.
We’ve made a change this year in the entry procedure. You now need only send in one audio or MP3 CD of your entry, or tell us where we can download the files. We’ll distribute them to the judges in MP3 format. But be sure the MP3 is at least 256 kbps and 16 bit depth, and include all the ID3 tags you can. ID3 tags are text information embedded in the file and can be added using iTunes or any number of audio editors. Please include title, artist, author, year, track numbers, and you can put your website in the “comments” tag. You do still have to send in the entry form and fee.