Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
The Sound Of Their Own Voices
Audio Theater actors have a lot to say
Terry Condren has a voice for radio, a smattering of French and a tremendous joie de vivre about his role as the villain in “The Scarlet Pimpernel.” A newcomer to Northwest Arkansas Audio Theater, Condren has been “a real find,” says director Marshall Prettyman.
“He has given me a great deal of latitude,” says Condren of the veteran director. “He’s willing to let me get a little crazy with it.”
Condren started his career as radio DJ in Fayetteville, “playin’ the hits [in high school] while all my friends were sacking groceries and throwing newspapers.” He worked in markets as big as Dallas after studying at the University of Arkansas, but “eventually I decided I needed to make some real money, so I got into computers.”
Retired now and back in Northwest Arkansas, Condren just happened to see an audition notice for NWAAT and thought he might get a small role. Instead, he found himself cast as the villain of the piece, Chauvelin, the French ambassador to the English court.
The premise of the play is that the French Revolution is over, but the nobles of France are being arrested and executed as fast as the guillotine can fall.
“Into this maelstrom comes one man to stem the rising tide of French blood — an Englishman known only as ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel,’” says the 1930s Lux radio version of the play. “The object of every nobleman’s prayer, and every Revolutionist’s curse, he works silently, mysteriously, and successfully. He’s the only hope the French nobles have.”
The premise of audio theater is that actors, accompanied by a crew of talented sound effects creators, perform as though they are in a drama from the halcyon days of radio. This particular version of “The Scarlet Pimpernel” comes from the 1930s and originally starred Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland, who came to stardom as Ashley Wilkes and Melanie Hamilton in “Gone With the Wind” in 1939.
What the unique format means for Prettyman as director is that “you really have to stress to the actors just how important it is to understand exactly what they’re saying and what their motivations are in saying it — because the only way they have of expressing themselves in audio theater is how they say things.”
In the case of Sir Percy Blakeney — aka the Scarlet Pimpernel — there are numerous roles within the role, says Robbie Prettyman, working for the first time under the direction of his father. Sir Percy is a “bit of a fop,” the Scarlet Pimpernel is a hero — and he’s also switching in and out of Sir Percy’s disguises as a priest, an old woman and more.
“Treading that line is a very fun challenge,” Robbie Prettyman says. “You’ve got to create voices that are similar enough to be the same person but different enough you can tell he’s [pretending to be] someone else.”
It makes it easier if you can rehearse with your real-life girlfriend, as he can with Jimmie Dell Johnson playing Lady Blakeney. “It’s also significantly easier to act as though you love someone when you truly do.”
Other actors face the challenge of playing more than one character — again, with nothing but their voices to set them apart. Kevin Hill, previously seen in “Almost, Maine” and “Meteor Shower” at Arkansas Public Theatre along with several film roles, is a French count, an English prince, a servant and a police sergeant.
“I must be able to separate all four characters by the sound of their voices — accent, tone, timbre, pitch, etc.” he says. “[And] that isn’t as easy as it may sound. Being cast in an audio production has challenged me as an actor, as a performer, in ways I was not prepared for.”