An innovative collaboration from Griffith's creative community have been encouraged by enormous audience response to a radio theatre production airing the months of October and November.
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Vintage Voices, a theatre production based on real historical evidence of Griffith has been airing on 2MIA and streaming online since October, with one more episode left to air. The team behind the production, Griffith and Regional Association of Performing Arts (GRAPA) and Pioneer Park museum have been encouraged by the positive community response, particularly coming out of a COVID affected year.
"We were really disappointed that weren't able to do our usual annual event this year but so far I think people have been really happy that we've been able to do something and keep that momentum from last year's production going," Oumi Karenga-Hewitt, president of GRAPA said.
A terrific feat of commitment bringing together people with skills from all aspects of production, saw Vintage Voices producing 10 episodes recorded over three long days and actors auditioning for parts over six days of auditions.
A total of 40 people auditioned for parts, a response never seen before by the production team which even attracted actors from as far as Germany.
"It blew us away," Bonnie Owen, producer of Vintage Voices said.
"I've never seen so many auditions for something that wasn't a musical.
Ms Owen, who is also the curator at Pioneer Park museum introduced the idea to bring Griffith's history to life through the production and writer/director Lisa Semmler was excited to create stories connecting Griffith's past and present.
"Bonnie and I were talking about Pioneer Park and so she sent me a whole bunch of resources and we worked out a rough idea of each story based on Griffith's true history and I created the fictional characters and stories from there," Ms Semmler said.
Thanks to Vintage Voices, Griffith's theatre scene has been kept on life support in a year that has seen the arts crumble under challenging COVID restrictions.
"We are so proud of what we've been to accomplish which is a COVID lockdown response to our productions," Mrs Owen said.
"Vintage Voices has really opened up the idea to people to get involved in the arts but who are maybe just a bit shy about being on stage," Mrs Karenga-Hewitt said.
"It's made us really think about different ways to get people into the arts."
All episodes of Vintage Voices will be available to listen to anytime at the GRAPA website from next week.
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Kat is a former English teacher to international students and has taught all over the world. She is beginning a new career as a journalist with the Area News. Got something you want to chat about? She's all ears.
Kat is a former English teacher to international students and has taught all over the world. She is beginning a new career as a journalist with the Area News. Got something you want to chat about? She's all ears.
