One of my favorite things to do once a month is perform in the Open Mic Night at our church The Crossing. My brother Tim, a noted musician, began it nearly two years ago to highlight the many talented folks who dwell in our congregation and to put to good use the
sound equipment we have in the Teen Room. Donations during the shows help finance trips for the teens and to help the ministry.
I started out in the beginning doing old time crooning and big band numbers by Sinatra, Dean Martin, Crosby, and others, as well as a little stand-up comedy. But what I soon found out was that I loved bringing back to life the flavor of the Golden Age of Radio. I began it in small portions by recreating the opening themes of "The Adventures of Superman" and "The Lone Ranger", which went over great with the crowd, then because of other projects I had to abandon it for a while.
But it was enough to
start talk about what that crazy Mark Dooley was going to do next and bring a lot of people to our show.
Well, tomorrow night, I'm officially launching "The WCRS Radio Players" featuring myself, my BFF Michael Bryan Walt, and Tim's singing partner Angela Jones, in an original live radio production of Lester Dent's unproduced pilot script for the Doc Savage radio series from the 1930's. The story is based on "The Man of Bronze", the first of the supersagas, using Dent's original script with extra dialogue by moi.
I had to do some script punch-up on this because, while the fifteen minute script, "The Red Death" is a workable adaptation of TMOB, there's barely any of the great characterization of the Fabulous Five that Dent
filled his novels with. Monk, Ham, Renny, Johnny, and Long Tom might as well be Tom, Dick, and three Larrys. So wherever possible I threw in things like Ham and Monk's needling each other, a "Holy Cow!" here and there for Renny, more of Johnny's huge vocabulary, and even Doc has a lighthearted moment when he references one of his archeology teachers, a certain "Dr. Jones".
It's just gonna be huge fun, I had a blast putting together the CD for the sound effects and the music (we're using "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" for our score, and with the script the whole thing just soars). Mike will be doing the voices of Monk and Renny, Angela will
play Princess Monja, and I'll be doing the voices of Doc, Ham, Johnny, Long Tom, the Feathered Serpent, King Chaac, and several evil Mayan minions.
One of the funniest things that came up was when I presented the script to Angela, she wondered what a Mayan princess sounded like. Angela is originally from Ireland and has a distinct Irish accent, as well as a great singing voice. "I dunno... you may be the first Irish Mayan I've ever met.". She absolutely broke up. Anyway, it all starts at 7:00 PM tomorrow at The Crossing in the Roviar Building, 316 12th Str., Columbus, IN. The show is free, though, as I said before, donations to our teen ministry are always welcome. Can't wait for tomorrow!
