I’m cautiously optimistic about this. Amazon and Audible (wait, aren’t they the same company now?) have $5million to fund new one and two-man “plays” to presumably be made available via the Audible download service.
…isn’t this just radio drama? It’s weird to me that they’re calling for playwrights. Am I missing something? Are these plays going to actually be performed where someone can go *see* it, live, or is it what I’m assuming and it’s all downloadable audio?
Everybody wants to get into the original content game now, which is great for consumers (Netflix is literally canceling good shows now on purpose because they don’t want to be thought of as too successful!), and it’s nice to see that the audio crowd hasn’t been left out.
But just how much can you get done in a one or two man show where all you’ve got to work with is sound? That’s pretty reminiscent of radio drama from, what, 70 years ago? And even then they typically had a larger cast to work with.
Not a lot of Shakespeare in this one, but I thought this crowd would still be interested. Could you turn a Shakespeare play into a one man show? Which one would you tackle, and how would you do it? Almost certainly have to be a tragedy, but could you even do it from the point of view of the tragic hero, if he’s going to die at the end?