Theatre company has only Pride for podcast production

BALLARAT National Theatre’s Pride and Prejudice podcast series, dramatically reading the Jane Austen novel, has gained three hundred digital subscribers and three thousand listens since its May launch.

Approaching its tenth instalment, sharing two to three chapters each episode, it’s the first online show the community theatre company has developed. With a cast of 26, 80 per cent of actors involved in BNT’s 2018 physical Pride and Prejudice production have returned to bring the audiobook to life.

Podcast director, Liana Skewes said the cast jumped at the opportunity to work together again, challenge their voice acting skills and express themselves through the COVID-19 period, as all in-person performances were put on hold.

“We’ve all been actively in contact since the show in 2018, and everyone’s been quite close. When the pandemic started to impact the way theatre operates, and everybody’s lives, we reached for the people who sparked a bit of joy for us,” she said.

“We all really loved the show. Pride and Prejudice was outside of copyright, we didn’t have to worry about licencing fees, so I suggested we read the book with everyone voicing the characters.

“The book has more characters in it than were in the play. Because everybody’s theatre company had cancelled projects, we had a massive influx of interest, over 250 expressions of interest and over 100 auditions.”

Actors all originally recorded their dialogue using their smartphones, but some have bought external microphones, and explored their home environments to find the best locations where they can read and be clearly heard.

For Skewes, this experimentation and on-the-spot learning is a big part of community theatre’s excitement, whether on the stage or performing online.

“We were expecting the podcast to be average quality, but fun and something nice for us. The first effort was rough, but we’re all learning lot and each episode gets better. Now it’s above amateur,” she said.

“At first, it was going to be an offering in the meantime. But now the board has cancelled their entire season, so we are their current production, and the groundwork we’ve made in this production we could use for other things, too.”

The first episode has had 1000 listens and is the gateway to a “completely new” way of engaging with the classic, romantic text.

“There’s a big jump between the movie, the BBC adaption, or any other adaption, and the audiobook,” Skewes said.

“I’ve never seen anyone do a dramatised reading of the novel, so circumstance has given us an opportunity to explore a format of entertainment that hasn’t been done before, which is exciting.

“It makes the text accessible to people, and we’ve had feedback saying they’re having a new experience that they’ve never had before with Austen because of it.”

She encourages potential listeners to persevere through the first and “roughest” episode, because the story and production “gets better and better.”

“Episode nine is my absolute favourite. It explores Jane’s actual, honest, vulnerable heartbreak. It’s quite an action-packed episode.”

Although most listeners are within Australia, a large proportion are tuning in from North America and Europe. The series’ production team of three estimates the 25 episode-arch will have aired by mid-November.

Visit ballaratnationaltheatre.buzzsprout.com to listen or search for the show in your preferred podcast app.

Contact BNT at facebook.com/BallaratNationalTheatreInc if the podcast is not already on the app you use.