Local theater company Shortwave Kitsch is bringing to life the lost art of the live radio show in its new 2023 season with six episodic performances.
The performances produced by Shortwave Kitsch harken back to the era of the 1940s, when live radio shows were one of the most popular sources of entertainment for Americans. These shows are dramatized, purely acoustic performances, or as co-founder Brandon Joyner describes the genre, “theater of the mind.”
“I always found the concept of a radio show to be really interesting,” he said. “It’s not like a book, where you created the entire world yourself based on what you’re reading. It’s not like a film, where all of those boxes of sound and visuals are checked for you. It’s just something that’s very different from anything else.”
The company writes and produces all of their shows. Each performance is a new “episode” which is performed and recorded in front of a live audience. The shows are performed by a core cast of 12 local actors, including the four Shortwave Kitsch founders: Maddie Castro, Kristen Granet, Brandon Joyner and Brooke Rash.
Joyner, the writer and lyricist behind the original productions, grew up watching reruns of I Love Lucy and listening to the music of the 1940s and 1950s, which inspired his idea for Shortwave Kitsch. He connected with Maddie Castro in college over their shared love of all things vintage, as well as musical performance.
“We’re millennials, so we grew up with eight tracks and records, you know, before they were cool again,” Joyner said.
“When I first got access to the internet, I listened to a lot of old radio shows like The Shadow with Lamont Cranston and The War of the Worlds, (Orson Welles’s 1938 radio dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth). And then with podcasting coming into popularity in the 2010s, I kept thinking about radio shows. So Shortwave Kitsch became this idea of creating something that was very much of yesteryear, and at the same time, creating something new.”
The company was founded in February 2022 and performed its first show last August.
Musical director Pedro Toro composes the musical scores. Brooke Rash is the live foley artist on stage, creating sound effects like footsteps, keys jingling and doorknobs twisting. while the actors stand in front of microphones. Kristen Granet is the front-of-house manager, and Maddie Castillo runs the social media.
The company’s tagline “new stories, vintage vibes” describes exactly the kind of shows they produce, often tackling the issues of today through vintage storylines.
The company creates new “episodes” of six different shows, based on shows that would have existed in the 1940s. The western in the Shortwave Kitsch catalog is called A Hog Killin’ Time, during which characters like gold prospectors and railroad tycoons go up against cowboys in a small town during the era of manifest destiny.
Hollywood Hunters follows the story of the agents at Odd/Ball Talent, the leader in getting the creepy creatures in the monster pictures of the day. Extra Intelligence follows an American who becomes a Nazi spy during World War II
and discovers aliens are planning to invade the Earth.
The company plans to make a podcast of its recorded performances, just like the radio shows it emulates.
“We’re going to make a podcast, so that even if you can’t be in the audience, that’s OK. We wanted to share it as a live presentation for an audience, but also share it with people who can’t come to Charleston right now, or that we can’t get to a performance,” Joyner said.
“It really is about community and creating something that can be shared, either as a podcast, or shared with family and friends through sitting in the theater together.”
The company has performed at Flowertown Players in Summerville, Theatre 99 downtown, the Encore Music Hall in Mount Pleasant and other venues around town. Joyner said the model of popping-up at various venues is a part of the company’s mission to share this art form with as many people as possible.
Joyner added he is grateful for the audiences thus far who’ve taken a chance on the new theater company.
“This doesn’t happen without an audience of some kind,” Joyner said. “This doesn’t happen after that without people listening to our upcoming podcast. I cannot tell you how appreciative I am of anybody who will lay down a few dollars and take a chance on our company.”
Shortwave Kitsch offers two shows at 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. April 22 at Encore Music Hall in Mount Pleasant. Tickets are $20 and available at shortwavekitsch.com.
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